The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Bahamians will soon be able to transact in Sand Dollars with persons holding bank accounts and digital wallets at other financial services providers, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.

Kwasi Thompson, minister of state for finance, told the Senate during yesterday’s mid-year budget debate that “the Central Bank has also worked to achieve the interoperability of all proprietary mobile apps within the Sand Dollar infrastructure.

“This means that businesses and individuals will be able to send and receive funds with any other digital wallets once the transaction is in Sand Dollars,” he added. “The Central Bank has imposed a timeline to achieve cross-platform interoperability by the end of the first quarter of 2021.

“Imminently, the Central Bank will also complete the integration of the digital infrastructure with the commercial banking system. This will establish a link between wallets and deposit accounts. Those with access to online banking will be able to wire funds to their Sand Dollar wallets and, when desired, to send funds from their wallets to their deposit accounts.

“The direct integration of the Sand Dollar to the Automated Clearing House (ACH) and the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems is expected to be concluded by the end of the first quarter of 2021.”

John Rolle, the Central Bank’s governor, said the regulator was “making progress” towards full banking and payments system integration with the Bahamian digital currency. “We are making certain that the system can communicate through the ACH system,” he added.

“That is work that we are actively in the midst of, and we are nearing the completion point. So between this month and going into April we have set the deadline for the completion of that work. As a matter of fact we are working on trying to get that done by the end of March, so we won’t be far off from that timeline.”

The Sand Dollar, which will accelerate and deepen the move to digital and electronic payments, should also help to fill the vacuum created in many Family Island economies and communities by the withdrawal of commercial bank branches.

Mr Rolle said: “If somebody wants to put money on a mobile or digital wallet, similar to the way they would make transfers using their banking facilities for other purposes, the mobile wallet would just be another address to which they could transfer funds.

“This will help the people in the Family Islands, because it will go in two directions. The big part of the work that we’re doing is really so that the Sand Dollar infrastructure can send money into bank accounts.

“So if somebody has more money in a digital wallet than they intend to use, they will be able to go through the process of sending it to a bank account to be identified, similar to the way you would wire funds from bank to bank. You will be sending a wire through the system and we will be using the messaging standard that the ACH adopts for people to send funds.”