Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Publicly Launches New Digital Currency

[BrunoBrorm]

The Saint Kitts and Nevis-based Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has publicly unveiled its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) called DCash

Many countries, including Russia, China and Japan, continue to test CBDCs and so far only one central bank has launched CBDCs - the Central Bank of the Bahamas.

The launch of DCash is notable for being the first example of a central bank within a monetary union starting to work with CBDC. A currency union is an agreement between two or more countries to support the same currency or the same prices for their currencies. The Eastern Caribbean Monetary Union (ECCU) includes eight Caribbean countries, but DCash will only be available for use in four of them: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Saint Lucia.

ECCB partnered with fintech firm Bitt to manage infrastructure and operations of DCash. Thanks to the DCash Merchant app, CBDC can be used for consumer purposes, e-commerce, B2B, and internal cash management.