The is­suance of the world’s first blockchain-based dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy is be­ing launched in the Caribbean.

The East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) and the Bar­ba­dos-based fin­tech com­pa­ny, Bitt Inc. (Bitt) have signed a con­tract to part­ner in this ven­ture and roll out this pi­lot project with­in the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union (EC­CU).

The con­tract was signed on Feb­ru­ary 21 and EC­CB’s Cen­tral Bank Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy (CB­DC) pi­lot, which is the first of its kind, will in­volve a se­cure­ly mint­ed and is­sued dig­i­tal ver­sion of the EC dol­lar.

Pe­ter George, Chair­man of Bitt said: “The sig­nif­i­cance of this for the Caribbean re­gion and through­out the world is that, once this ex­er­cise is com­plet­ed and that first se­cure­ly mint­ed dig­i­tal ver­sion of the EC dol­lar is is­sued and the first trans­ac­tion is done, it will be akin to when the first email was ever sent.”

The dig­i­tal EC dol­lar will be dis­trib­uted and used by Li­censed Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions and Non-Bank Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions in the EC­CU. The dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy will be used for fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions be­tween con­sumers and mer­chants, in­clud­ing peer-to-peer trans­ac­tions— all us­ing smart de­vices.

For ex­am­ple, an in­di­vid­ual in St Kitts and Nevis will be able to send dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy se­cure­ly from their smart­phone to a friend in Grena­da in sec­onds—and at no cost to ei­ther par­ty.

CEO of Bitt, Raw­don Adams, said, “I thank the EC­CB for choos­ing Bitt. Our mis­sion is the prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion of cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy to solve per­sis­tent fi­nan­cial prob­lems.”

He said: “It is about a suc­cess­ful cur­ren­cy union build­ing on its im­pres­sive record of fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, de­vel­op­ment and in­te­gra­tion to de­liv­er a quan­tum im­prove­ment to the lives of all its 630,000 cit­i­zens. En­hanc­ing eco­nom­ic growth and the qual­i­ty of life of or­di­nary peo­ple is the aim.”

The Gov­er­nor of the EC­CB, Tim­o­thy N J An­toine, em­pha­sised that in con­trast to pre­vi­ous CB­DC re­search and ex­per­i­ments, the EC­CB is go­ing a step fur­ther.

An­toine not­ed: “This is not an aca­d­e­m­ic ex­er­cise. Not on­ly will the dig­i­tal EC dol­lar be the world’s first dig­i­tal le­gal ten­der cur­ren­cy to be is­sued by a cen­tral bank on blockchain but this pi­lot is al­so a live CB­DC de­ploy­ment with a view to an even­tu­al phased pub­lic roll­out.”

“The pi­lot is part of the EC­CB’s Strate­gic Plan 2017-2021 which aims to help re­duce cash us­age with­in the EC­CU by 50 per cent, pro­mote greater fi­nan­cial sec­tor sta­bil­i­ty, and ex­pe­dite the growth and de­vel­op­ment of our mem­ber coun­tries. It would be a game-chang­er for the way we do busi­ness,” said An­toine.

The EC­CB is now poised to em­bark on the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy pi­lot project in March. The pi­lot will be ex­e­cut­ed in two phas­es: de­vel­op­ment and test­ing, for about 12 months, fol­lowed by roll­out and im­ple­men­ta­tion in pi­lot coun­tries for about six months.

As part of the pi­lot im­ple­men­ta­tion, the EC­CB will ramp up its sen­si­ti­sa­tion and ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives to fa­cil­i­tate ac­tive pub­lic en­gage­ment through­out all mem­ber coun­tries.

The EC­CB is be­ing tech­ni­cal­ly sup­port­ed on this project by Pina­ka Con­sult­ing Ltd.