RF Holdings Limited, parent company to a group of investment banks in The Bahamas, Barbados, and the Cayman Islands, has entered into partnership with financial technology company, Bitt to facilitate the acceptance of digital currency transactions across its Caribbean network.

The partnership, which focuses on developing a platform based on Bitt’s digital currency infrastructure, will allow for digital currencies, such as ‘Sand Dollar’in The Bahamas, ‘mMoney’ in Barbados, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s ‘DCash’, to be accepted and accessed across the investment’s bank’s products by a wider network of Caribbean clients. RF, through this latest venture, intends for this platform to not only assist in providing added convenience to clients of the investment bank, but to also create a more efficient business model. The platform will be able to facilitate payments from and between institutions such as banks, individual consumers and merchants.

According to Michael Anderson, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of RF Group, the growing popularity of digital currencies internationally has resulted in an increased need for the same in the Caribbean.

“At RF we believe in embracing new technologies and trends to serve our clients in the most effective ways. We look forward to creating, in collaboration with Bitt, a convenient solution for our clients who previously couldn’t access our investment vehicles to easily do business with us,” he said.

A release statement yesterday said that as digital currencies become more available, the benefits of cross-border digital currency exchange for the Caribbean region will expand far beyond the conveniences it will provide for RF clients.

“The longer-term goal of the platform is to facilitate general online payments — making mobile and online goods and services more accessible and more affordable in the Caribbean region by allowing individuals and businesses to efficiently transact directly with each other. The immediate target for the platform is facilitating transactions based on available digital currencies in The Bahamas and Barbados. The platform’s services will [however] be eventually offered to the rest of the Caribbean,” the release stated.

Bitt provides its Digital Currency Management Systems (DCMS) to central banks, commercial banks and credit unions, merchants and consumers, to equip every ecosystem participant with the digital currency components necessary to participate in fully digital transactions for the post-COVID-19 economy.

Bitt’s CEO Brian Popelka, commenting on this latest development, said that since its 2016 launch of the synthetic digital currency in Barbados, the company has been working towards the creation of an intra-regional, cross-border settlement solution to unlock trade, investment, and remittance flows within the Caribbean.

“We are thrilled to be working with RF Holdings to leverage Bitt’s DCMS in creating a solution that will boost RF’s product offering and usher in a transformational way of conducting business within the region,” he said.