Bahamas Looks to Deploy its CBDC The Sand Dollar Across Borders

The Central Bank of the Bahamas (CBOB) has revealed an ambitious use case for its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) ahead of the national roll-out on October 20. The CBDC has been dubbed the Sand Dollar.

Sand Dollar To Find Relevance Across Borders

Speaking at an organized virtual presentation by the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers’ Confederation for businesses ahead of the Sand Dollar rollout, CBOB’s Bobby Chen, assistant manager of electronic solutions said that plans are in place to aid the integration of the Sand Dollars with other global currencies.

Referring to the Sand Dollars, Chen noted:

“At the moment, it is currently only used in a domestic setting, but eventually we are working on a solution that will make it interoperable with other global currencies."

Other emphases have also been pointed out to highlight the unique functionalities of the Sand Dollars which will aid it in its proposed proposition to permeate the Bahamian economy.

CBOB Head of Banking Cleopatra Davis said:

“Some of the central strategies around Sand Dollar is the API card-less onboarding. This became extremely important during the time of COVID-19 because we realized it’s not business as we know it prior to COVID-19. Mobility and face-to-face may not be as easily accessible [...] through the API card-less onboarding you’re going to be able to have access to Sand Dollar without physically entering a business place to do so.”

In order to meet with the environmental hazards prevalent in the Bahamas including Hurricane Dorian, the Sand Dollars has also been designed to have offline functionalities.

Bahamas May Be The First to Launch a Legal Tender CBDC

Should the Central Bank of the Bahamas meet up with it’s scheduled plan to roll out the Sand Dollars this month, Bahamas will rank as the first country to launch a CBDC that can be categorized as a legal tender.

The Bank of Lithuania earlier launched a blockchain-based digital collector’s coin dubbed LBCoins as part of its test for its soon to be launched CBDC.