As it seeks to expand the adoption of its digital currency SandDollar, Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBOB) revealed last week that Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) is the newest authorized financial institution approved as an authorized financial institution (AFI).
In a public update on the digital currency, CBOB also revealed that it has completed its bank integration technical developments for the transfer of funds to SandDollar and vice versa.
"As of June 2023, the Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) will become the latest AFI to begin providing SandDollar wallet services to customers in a targeted and phased rollout," the bank said.
"The Central Bank collaborated closely with BOB to allow the institution to pilot limited use of the original SandDollar app, before this deployment to customers."
The new AFI comes as the CBOB prepares to extend proprietary wallet access to the Bahamas Automated Clearing House (ACH) via the SandDollar infrastructure for bank integration.
"The Central Bank has completed developments to extend ACH top-up, redemption access to the proprietary SandDollar-enabled digital wallets," the Central Bank said.
"Digital wallet providers can begin activating this customer feature by the end of May 2023. SandDollar wallet holders of all levels will be able to use this feature, once provided with a top-up address through their respective digital wallet provider. All mobile wallet account holders will be able to use the third-party transfer features within their online and mobile banking applications to send funds to their SandDollar accounts, regardless of wallet level or wallet provider. While all wallets will be able to receive top-ups from bank accounts, only account holders who have successfully undertaken enhanced KYC for tier II (individuals) and tier III (businesses) statuses will be permitted to redeem SandDollars through linked bank deposit accounts.
"The SandDollar redemption process transfers SandDollars from a wallet to the linked bank account. Such users must perform a penny test successfully before redemption links can be used. To prepare for the expanded access to the ACH, the Central Bank will release instructional videos on completing online top-ups using each commercial banking platform. In June, the Central Bank will commence beta testing of the white-labelled Wallet 2.0 for automatic self-onboarding of users to lower KYC (tier I) wallets. This app is targeted for release to the public in August 2023. It would provide the users with access to a branded version of the Central Bank-developed app linked to the SandDollar Authorized Financial Institution (AFI) of choice selected by the individual. Wallet 2.0 also provides merchant services features, which are scheduled for a later 2023 release date."
The Central Bank also revealed the value of mobile payments in March, the latest available data, amounted to $4.6 million in transactions, the majority of them in SandDollar.
"In the latest available data, the unwinding of
government social assistance transfers led to reduced person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-business (P2B) transactions in March 2023, compared to the same month in 2022. Alongside bank-to-bank (B2B) transactions, the total value of mobile payments during March was, accordingly, reduced by 1.4 percent to $4.6 million, albeit with an expanded volume of both P2B and B2B transfers. A large majority of the transactions continued to be settled in SandDollars."
As of April 2023, $1.08 million SandDollars were in circulation, there were 104,664 consumer wallets and 1,512 merchant wallets; however, there were 455 active SandDollar merchants.
"The public can expect outreach activities to continue throughout the year. Initial public outreach is also planned in June for parts of Andros and Abaco. Likewise, the SandDollar team plans to visit Long Island in July," the bank said.
"SandDollar adoption efforts also saw the Central Bank digital currency featured as a payment method at all the Bahamas Carnival events held from 18 to 21 May 2023, including online ticket sales."
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