The Central Bank of the Bahamas launched the state-backed “Sand Dollar” – the central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to a Facebook post on October 20 from Project Sand Dollar. Sand Dollar is nationwide, available to all 393,000 residents of The Bahamas from around 10:00 pm UTC. This makes the Bahamas become the first country in the world to implement CBDCs officially.
China is currently testing a pilot program for its DC / EP digital yuan with a $ 1.5 million gift. Meanwhile, Cambodia’s national cryptocurrency “Bakong” is expected to come into operation in the coming months after its pilot launch in July 2019.
Sand Dollar transfers are done by mobile phones, with around 90% of Bahamian’s population using a mobile phone as of 2017.
The Sand Dollar website clearly describes:
The residents of The Bahamas can use the digital currency at any merchant with a Central Bank approved e-Wallet on their mobile device, and transaction fees are negligible.
The central bank selected transaction provider NZIA as its technology solutions provider for the digital currency rollout. The Bahamas central bank has been preparing for the CBDC launch for the past few years. In 2019, the Bahamas started a pilot program using $ 48,000 of digital sand on the islands of Exuma and Abaco, where a total population of fewer than 25,000 people. Each sand dollar is tied to the Bahamian dollar, which ties to the US dollar.
Sand Dollar aims to promote greater financial inclusion in the archipelagic nation of more than 700 islands, about 30 inhabited. Furthermore, Chaozhen Chen, assistant director of eSolutions at the Central Bank of the Bahamas, said the CBDC would help provide access to digital payment infrastructure or banking infrastructure for some citizens who never used this service.