The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) this week rolled out its DCash digital currency in the island of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

The ECCB sees the roll-out of the currency as critical to the rebuilding efforts in that country, following the recent eruption of the La Soufriere volcano.

DCash, a digital currency developed by global fintech company Bitt, is a platform which provides safer and more convenient mediums through which people can send and receive funds via smart devices. With the expansion of this service, the ECCB is also seeks to increase financial inclusion in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).

Speaking after the launch of the service in St Vincent, Brian Popelka, CEO of Bitt, said he was hoping for the roll-out to be meaningful to especially the unbanked and underbanked population in that country.

“The public issuance of DCash in [SVG] exemplifies Bitt’s commitment to our mandate of enabling payments and empowering people through the licensing of our full Digital Currency Management System (DCMS),” he stated in a recent news release.

Bitt, which has been the ECCB’s technology partner since 2019, provides technological enhancement and support to the ECCB, which has ultimate ownership of the currency.

“Our proprietary minting system guarantees that the central bank will always have control over the money supply. The public can also feel safe and secure knowing that DCash, and any other Bitt-developed CBDC solution, is designed to be trustworthy and controlled solely by the central bank,” Popelka explained.

Following its most recent expansion to SVG, DCash is now operational as a digital currency in five of the eight Eastern Caribbean states including Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia. The ECCB, however, advised that the digital technology will be issued to the other three countries in September, namely: Dominica, Anguilla and Monserrat, noting that technical support and stakeholder engagements provided by Bitt were already underway in these countries.