Eastern Caribbean Digital Currency platform crashes

The interruption in service has affected all users and no DCash trransactions are being conducted until the system is upgraded.

The ECCB released the digital dollar in pilot form in March last year following two years of work with technology company Bitt.

In a statement, the central bank says: “The ECCB is fully aware of the impact of this service interruption to all of our DCash partners. We are actively and diligently working with our service provider, technical partner and specialists to bring the platform back online.”

The bank says a report has been made and logged of all failed transactions, which will be honoured in full once the network is up and running again. No timeline has been given for when the system will be brought back online.

The ECCB is sanguine about the interruption: “The current service interruption is unfortunate but is providing a useful opportunity for testing the resilience of our platform ahead of commercial deployment and integration.”

Ghana is currently piloting its CBDC – the eCedi in a Sandbox created by the central bank. It is important that the country learns on the lessons it can from experiences like the one in Eastern Caribbean, to prevent a crash of the eCedi platform in the future.