FinWikiPublic-source finance field guide
日EN

Bahamas Sand Dollar — nationwide retail CBDC release on 2020-10-20, AFI distribution, and end-2024 evidence

ConfidenceLikelyUpdated2026-07-30Review by2026-11-25Sources8Machine-translatedOriginal (JA)

On this page

Wiki route

This entry sits under fintech index as a dated jurisdiction case study of the Sand Dollar. It records the nationwide release that began on 2020-10-20, the regulated wallet-provider model, and the end-2024 adoption snapshot. The title is date-bounded: it does not claim that Sand Dollar is currently the “longest-running” retail CBDC. Read the separate entries on Nigeria eNaira, Jamaica JAM-DEX, and CBDC adoption curve 2026 for other jurisdictions; this page does not infer a shared design lineage or adoption ranking from those comparisons. CBOB’s national-release notice supplies the release date.

[!info] TL;DR The Central Bank of The Bahamas announced that the national release of Sand Dollar, outside the Exuma and Abaco pilot regions and through authorised financial institutions (AFIs), would begin on 2020-10-20. The 2021 Regulations define the digital currency as fully backed and a direct claim against the Central Bank, while the official individual-wallet page describes it as the digital version of legal tender. The dated end-2024 snapshot reported by the IMF was about 0.4% of currency in circulation, 133,481 consumer wallets, and 2,034 merchant wallets. Those wallet totals are registrations, not an active-use measure. National-release notice; 2021 Regulations; official individual-wallet page; IMF Country Report No. 26/31. ↗

Programme architecture

                  Central Bank of The Bahamas
                  issues Bahamian Dollar Digital Currency
                              │
                              ▼
               fully backed direct central-bank claim
                              │
                              ▼
       registered wallet providers / authorised financial institutions
       banks · credit unions · money transmitters · payment institutions
                              │
                              ▼
                individual and non-individual wallets
                  Tier I · Tier II · other tiers

The diagram is limited to roles stated in the 2021 Regulations and the national-release notice. It does not assert that one provider’s wallet balance can be moved to another provider without a redemption, transfer, or re-enrolment step.

Matrix A · Legal form, authority, and dated release

Item Directly supported detail
Lead authority The Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBOB) issues the Bahamian Dollar Digital Currency
Legal form The 2021 Regulations define it as an electronic version of the Bahamian dollar, fully backed by Central Bank reserves and representing a direct claim against the Central Bank
Legal-tender description The official individual-wallet page describes Sand Dollar as the digital version of legal tender issued by CBOB
Nationwide release CBOB said release outside Exuma and Abaco would begin through AFIs on 2020-10-20
Historical-first wording BIS Papers No. 114 described the 2020-10-20 launch as the arrival of a live general-purpose CBDC; this page makes no current duration ranking
Domestic-use boundary The official design page says the CBDC is for domestic use and prohibits acceptance by non-domestic payees

Source note: the 2021 Regulations, official individual-wallet page, national-release notice, BIS Papers No. 114, and official design page directly support the bounded statements above.

Matrix B · Documented design features and evidence limits

Feature What the direct source states Evidence boundary
Central-bank claim BDDC is fully backed by reserves and is a direct claim against CBOB This establishes legal form, not adoption or safety outcomes
Intermediated distribution Registered wallet providers include commercial banks, credit unions, money-transmission providers or agents, and payment institutions The cited sources do not quantify the effect of this allocation on onboarding or competition
Interoperability standards Providers must support sending and receiving through a provider-independent user alias, standard account number, and QR code This supports cross-provider payment addressing, not a claim of lossless provider switching
Risk-based tiers The national-release notice describes low-value personal, regular personal, and business or enterprise tiers with different due-diligence requirements and limits Actual inclusion outcomes require usage data
Non-anonymous transactions The national-release notice says cash anonymity is not replicated and transactions connect to AML/CFT controls The cited sources do not establish user perceptions of privacy
Offline specification The official design page describes preset-value payments during communication outages and later network updating This is a documented specification, not evidence of field availability, coverage, or performance
Individual fees The official individual-wallet page states zero transaction fees for individuals This does not establish all provider fees or merchant pricing
Domestic use The official design page restricts the CBDC to domestic use No cross-border capability is inferred

Source note: 2021 Regulations, national-release notice, official design page, and official individual-wallet page.

The direct sources document these features. They do not establish that Sand Dollar avoided a “walled garden,” that e-CNY or a proposed digital euro copied the model, or that the model is “canonical” or superior.

Matrix C · End-2024 adoption snapshot reported by the IMF

Metric Dated figure
Share of total currency in circulation About 0.4% at end-2024
Consumer wallets 133,481 by December 2024, up 12.2% year on year
Merchant wallets 2,034 by December 2024, up 3.2% year on year
Population comparison The IMF described the consumer-wallet total as about one third of the country’s population
Active-wallet or transaction rate Not supplied in the cited IMF passage; no active-use percentage is inferred

Source note: footnote 11 to paragraph 24 of IMF Country Report No. 26/31 reports the end-2024 figures.

The wallet counts are an enrolment snapshot. They do not show how many distinct people held multiple wallets, how many wallets were active, or how intensively Sand Dollar was used.

Matrix D · AFI and wallet-provider roles

                 Central Bank issuer
                         │
                         ▼
             registered wallet providers
                         │
        ┌────────────────┼─────────────────┐
        ▼                ▼                 ▼
 banks / credit     money-transmission   payment
 unions             providers / agents  institutions
        └────────────────┼─────────────────┘
                         ▼
              consumer and merchant wallets
Provider category Role documented by the direct sources
Commercial banks and credit unions Eligible financial intermediaries; the 2020 notice says they were expected to support customer due diligence and links between deposit accounts and wallets
Money-transmission businesses and payment-service providers Eligible intermediaries; the 2020 notice says onboarded firms could offer services through approved custom apps or the generic Sand Dollar app
Registered wallet providers generally Subject to CBOB registration and interoperability standards for provider-independent aliases, account numbers, and QR-code payments

Source note: CBOB’s national-release notice describes the intermediary categories and 2020 rollout roles; regulations 4–9 of the 2021 Regulations govern wallet providers and interoperability standards.

The official individual page tells users to choose an enabled AFI and download that AFI’s proprietary wallet. It does not say that a user can switch AFIs while preserving the same wallet or balance without an operational transfer step. Official individual-wallet page.

Matrix E · Official Tier I and Tier II individual-wallet limits

Individual tier Identity and bank-link rules on the official individual page Holding limit Transaction limit on the official individual page Limit in the 2022 Gazette notice
Tier I Government-issued ID is not required; cannot link a bank account B$500 B$1,500 per month B$1,500 per month
Tier II Government-issued ID is required; can link a bank account B$8,000 B$10,000 per month B$100,000 annually

Source note: the official individual-wallet page lists the identity, bank-link, holding, and monthly limits; the Bahamian Dollar Digital Currency (Holding and Transactional Limits) Notice, 2022 lists the gazetted holding and transaction periods. The monthly and annual Tier II figures are reported separately rather than converted or treated as identical.

These official limits do not establish which tier most users hold, whether the inclusion objective succeeded or failed, or whether the tier design has the same cause or effect as eNaira, JAM-DEX, or e-CNY.

Origin and dated evolution

Date Directly documented event
2019-12-24 CBOB’s project update said the Exuma pilot would start in December 2019 and planned an extension to Abaco in the first half of 2020
2020-09-25 CBOB announced that gradual national release through AFIs would begin on 2020-10-20
2020-10-20 The announced nationwide-release start date
2021-08-23 The Bahamian Dollar Digital Currency Regulations, 2021 were gazetted
2022-05-25 The holding and transactional limits notice was made; the Gazette publication is dated 2022-05-30
2024-12 The IMF’s later country report records the end-2024 circulation share and wallet totals

Source note: 2019 project update, 2020 national-release notice, 2021 Regulations, 2022 limits notice, and IMF Country Report No. 26/31.

The timeline stops at the latest dated fact used in this entry. It does not assert modest transaction growth, unchanged design in 2025–2026, uninterrupted operation, a “longest-running” rank, or that later CBDC designs borrowed from Sand Dollar.

Evidence boundary for adoption interpretation

The official materials describe financial inclusion and access across The Bahamas as programme objectives, and the IMF’s 2026 report says Sand Dollar was slowly expanding access in underserved communities, including some small islands. CBOB national-release notice; IMF Country Report No. 26/31.

The cited evidence does not establish that private payment rails caused gradual adoption, that a banked demographic majority had little reason to switch, that smartphone access or agent density was the binding constraint, or that the wallet design was structurally optimal. It also does not supply a current market panorama of named private providers. Those earlier causal and demographic claims are therefore omitted rather than presented as findings.

Sources

#fintech#cbdc#retail-cbdc#bahamas#sand-dollar#central-bank-bahamas

Discovery

Keep reading

Related

Read next

Links here