The East Caribbean Central Bank, (ECCB) major financial institution in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, has introduced the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) DCash. The ECCB held a press conference on Wednesday to unveil its plans to release a CBDC for the region.
DCash will be much like other CBDC’s and operate similarly to a stablecoin in respect to its value pegged to a fiat currency. The major difference between digital currencies and cryptocurrencies are intrinsic properties such as the decentralised nature of most cryptocurrencies and the mining mechanisms upholding the network are not present in CBDCs.
DCash is essentially the digital counterpart of the Eastern Caribbean dollar, the official currency of the union’s eight member nations. However, after DCashs initial launch, it will be accessible in only four members of the union in Grenada, Nevin, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis.
The project has been in the works for over two years, with the ECCB first revealing its CBDC plans in March 2019. As part of the launch ECCB Governor, Timothy Antoine, conducted the first-ever live DCash international transaction. It was reported that Governor Antoine transferred $100 DCash from the ECCB headquarters in St. Kitts to multiple wallet holders in three other nations participating in the projects release.
Subsequently, the ECCB will be able to produce and issue DCash by using Bitt’s CBDC executive protocols. The ECCB will also have authorisation to redeem and burn DCash CBDC.
During the unveiling, the ECCB mentions that DCash will facilitate both commercial and private transactions with vendors and merchants who register with the DCash Merchant App. Customers will be able to send DCash to residents of the currency union.
All partners hope to expand DCash to the currency union’s outstanding members: Montserrat, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Anguilla, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, bring together interoperability between nations with a single asset.
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