Eastern Caribbean digital currency remains offline

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s digital currency, DCash, has apparently not resumed operations since reporting a service interruption two weeks ago on January 14.

On January 26, the Barbados-based firm Bitt, which provides the blockchain technology used by DCash, confirmed to Central Banking that the system was still offline. Natalie Hartman, Bitt’s vice-president for marketing, told Central Banking that the source of the problem had been identified.

“We have been making steady progress on the system’s upgrades and are working closely with the ECCB to be restored as quickly as possible,” Hartman said, adding that “this has become an opportunity for the ECCB and Bitt to refine DCash’s technology and operations prior to full public deployment and integration”. She did not reply to questions about what had caused the problem.

DCash is a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), used as a digital equivalent to cash by consumers, retailers and banks. It employs a distributed ledger that verifies and stores information on a blockchain. 

The ECCB first launched DCash as a pilot programme in March 2021, in four of the central bank’s eight members. It has since been extended to three of the remaining ECCB territories, most recently to Dominica and Montserrat in December.

 The ECCB and Bitt still consider the programme to be in its pilot stage, although DCash is available in most Eastern Caribbean states.

Central banks in the Caribbean have led attempts to pioneer CBDCs. The Bahamas became the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce a retail CBDC in late 2020, while Jamaica expects to introduce one later this year.