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The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) is completing the final testing and assurance exercises following several system upgrades and will make the DCash platform available for public use during the week of March 7. The DCash system has been down since January 14. The interruption was due to an expiring certificate on the version of the Hyperledger Fabric that hosts the DCash ledger, and not to any external intervention. It has taken longer than expected to fix the problem because the ECCB took the opportunity to undertake several upgrades platform including enhancing the system's certificate management processes, and updating the version of Hyperledger Fabric. Other upgrades will allow the platform to process government disbursements to individuals and permit commercial websites to accept DCash. The ECCB says that the security and integrity of all DCash data, applications and architecture, including all central bank, financial institutions, merchant and wallet apps remain secure and intact.

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) announced that full functionality of the DCash CBDC platform has been restored effective March 9. It had been down since January 14, 2022As part of the restoration, the platform now benefits from several upgrades including an enhanced certificate management process and an updated version of the software which provides the foundation for the DCash system. Extensive testing and assurance exercises were conducted prior to restoration of the platform to ensure full functionality of the service in accordance with quality assurance specifications.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) provided an update on Project FuSSE (Fully Scalable Settlement Engine), a joint project with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and Bank of Canada. It is an initiative that offers open-source technology among central banks to facilitate the implementation of payment systems and other settlement infrastructures to advance financial inclusion Latin America and the Caribbean. It will also provide technical assistance for regulatory design and institutional capacity improvement.

"This paper documents the evolution of fintech in LAC. In particular, the paper focuses on financial development, fintech landscape for domestic and cross border payments and alternative financing, cybersecurity, financial integrity and stability risks, regulatory responses, and considerations for central bank digital currencies."

WeTrust is an Ethereum-based decentralized financial services platform. WeTrust's first product is a Trusted Lending Circle (TLC) platform. A TLC a group of individuals who agree to meet for a defined period in order to save and borrow together. TLCs are commonly built along clan, geographical, social, or professional networks. These organizations have a variety of different names such as: tontine (Cambodia), susus (Ghana/ Caribbean Islands), tandas (Latin America), hui (China), chit funds (India), cundinas (Mexico), etc... https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/community-development/publications/discussion-papers/discussionpaper-ROSCAs.pdf

According to the IMF paper, several central banks in different countries are considering implementing some form of CBDC. Uruguay has reportedly launched a pilot program already, while the Bahamas, China, Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, Sweden and Ukraine are on the verge of testing their systems.

Given that the ECCB has a fixed exchange rate regime, monetary policy implications of a CBDC would be limited. [But] key challenges that warrant careful considerations would include risks to financial intermediation, financial integrity, and cybersecurity.

Quite a comprehensive and well-written article on the state of the leading CBDC efforts, including some quotes from yours truly!

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is to launch a digital currency for the benefit of its dispersed island economies - essential to a region that has been disproportionately affected by climate change-induced disasters, governor Timothy Antoine tells fDi.

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) will roll-out DCash, the ECCB's digital currency, on March 31, 2021. Consumers can sign up to use DCash either through a participating financial institution or via an authorised DCash agent. The ECCB will roll out DCash initially in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia as part of the ECCB's Digital Currency Pilot.

According to this interview with John Rolle, the Governor of the Central Bank of the Bahama, "there are several other countries in the Caribbean [besides the Bahamas and the ECCB] that are going the route of CBDCs."

Stephen Phillips, VP product from Bitt presented the architecture of the system at the Hyperledger Capital Markets Special interest Group on January 27.

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) released a COVID-19 response tracker that monitors mobile money-specific regulatory policy, government and provider interventions globally, collated using both primary and secondary sources and updated weekly. The tracker is intended to support mobile money providers and regulators with a mobile money-specific policy response database and learnings from other markets, in order to effectively tailor policy responses for their market. The tracker collates data from 32 countries, spread across Sub-Saharan Africa (17), East Asia & Pacific (7), South Asia (4), Middle East & North Africa (3), and Latin America & Caribbean (1). An interim analysis of the data collated in the tracker showed preferred policy response instrument, regional variations, and the validity period of these instruments.

DCash, the digital version of the Eastern Caribbean dollar will soon be available. This video provides more detail. See also the DCash landing page on the EC Central Bank (ECCB) website. https://www.eccb-centralbank.org/p/what-you-should-know-1

February 13, 2021, Bitt, in partnership with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), executed the first successful retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) consumer-to-merchant transaction using DCash, the ECCB digital currency. The transaction was completed at Geo F. Huggins' Foodland, in the island of Grenada. The ECCB has begun to issue DCash to participating financial institutions to enable customer purchases at selected merchants, as part of the closed segment of the DCash pilot. This live exercise is the final step before the public launch in four of the ECCU's eight sovereign member countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia).

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) is inviting merchants to participate in its digital EC currency (DCash) pilot.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is partnering with Bitt to roll out its eNaira central bank digital currency (CBDC) later this year. Project Giant, as the Nigerian CBDC pilot is known, has been a long and thorough process for the CBN, that started with the Bank's decision to digitize the Naira in 2017. Bitt was previously key to the development and launch of the CBDC pilot of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) in April 2021. https://www.cbn.gov.ng/Out/2021/CCD/CBN%20Press%20Release%20(CBDC)%2030082021.pdf

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has made DCash, the digital version of the EC Dollar, available for public use in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as part of its continuing central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot launched on March 31, 2021. The initial rollout took place in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Ukrainian commercial bank TASCOMBANK, and Bitt, the firm behind the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Central Bank of Nigeria central bank digital currency pilots, have launched a pilot project to issue an electronic hryvnia on Stellar. The pilot will test the digital currency on the use cases of programmable payroll for public employees at Diia, an IT solutions enterprise, as well as for peer-to-peer payments and merchant payments. The project is being implemented under the supervision of the National Bank of Ukraine and with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

he Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are joining forces to foster innovation and financial inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean by exploring and developing technology that can help to modernise the region's financial systems. The first collaboration between the two institutions will be on Project FuSSE (Fully Scalable Settlement Engine, pronounced as fyooz). Project FuSSE aims to design and test backend functionality that can be adapted to multiple types of infrastructures, allowing them to process a continuously growing number of transactions. FuSSE aims to test highly scalable systems in three dimensions: the number of transactions, the types of assets and the number of participants. The technology could support payment systems, security settlement systems or even central bank digital currencies.