Bahamas: Sand Dollar pilot soon to be extended to the entire archipelago

The Central bank of the bahamas announced plans to expand its project pilot of digital currency Sand Dollar to all of the country's islands by the end of the year.

Last week, the governor of the Bahamian central bank, John Rolle, confirmed that the Bahamian digital dollar would be deployed in all the islands of the country during the second half of 2020, reports the local daily The Tribune.

Launched in 2019, the pilot Sand Dollar started in the archipelago Exumas and aims to support access to financial services in the Bahamas. As planned, it will be extended this month to the islands Abacos.

When we entered Exumas for the project, we started with 3 payment service providers and the commercial bank, but at this point we have a total of eight financial institutions that are at different stages of participating in the project, ”said Rolle.

The boss of the Bahamian bank explained that the objective of the project was to create an infrastructure allowing " ensure the interoperability of payment services ".

We are looking for a digital representation of our currency. It’s not a different currency; it's the same currency. We are not going to go to the rest of the bahamas before the second half of the year, and it depends on things like the pilot looking at a lot of the technology infrastructure, "he said.

Jerry Butler, former director of the Inter-American Development Bank, added that the initiative Sand Dollar could help the Bahamas "follow the rest of the world".

The announcement of Libra Facebook giant in June 2019 seems to have pushed many central banks to be more interested in digital currencies and a number including the Bank of France, have today launched the first experiments.

The People's Bank of China would be almost ready to issue its crypto-yuan. In December, local media reported that the institution would soon launch first full-scale tests in the cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou.