The Bahamas to Launch a Payment Card for Central Bank Digital Currency

Bahamas’ Central Bank has joined hands with Mastercard and digital payment startup Island Pay to introduce a prepaid card for its digital currency. 

The Bahamas is taking necessary steps to make its national digital currency more accessible by making a card for the “sand dollar”. 

Mastercard is a global payment giant that has now partnered with the Central Bank of Bahamas to introduce a card that supports the sand dollar. 

An announcement on Wednesday suggests that the card is a new program from Mastercard and Island Pay that will allow users to change the digital currency into the Bahamians dollar and use them for their everyday task. Now the card can be used for payments across the Caribbean region and on different locations that support MasterCard.

A spokesperson for Island Pay said, “Island Pay is the issuer of the Sand Dollar Mastercard. The card is integrated into our mobile wallet so that customers can view their balance and transaction information, enable/disable the card and check their PIN.”

This new solution is dependent on the technology by Island Pay. Central Bank has allowed a license for the company to operate as an electronic money institution and payment service provider. 

The representative of the company also said that the card is in private beta and the full launch is to be made in March. Once the card has been launched it will be linked to the payment services including Samsung Pay and Google Pay. 

However, this announcement does not specify the role of Mastercard’s technology yet but the company has been engaged actively with various CBDC from around the world. The Bahamas is known to be one of the pioneering countries to launch CBDC.