In order to explore digital currency, America’s oldest bank has entered into a partnership with a bitcoin startup. As per the reports, the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten (CBCS) has announced a partnership with blockchain technology firm Bitt aimed at exploring the issuance of a digital currency for Curacao and Sint Maarten island nations.
Rawdon Adams, Chief executive of Bitt, said that a digital currency will be especially relevant to the two countries, which are both constituent countries of the Netherlands and which share the same monetary union. With this, the risks and costs to be met by the CBCS in printing and distributing physical cash across the monetary union will be reduced. Apart from this, it will also be convenient for the citizens of the region.
He further added in his statement, “The digital currency, issued by the central bank, can be used on mobile wallets and will also aid secure and smooth financial transactions and payments with the help of mobile phone/tablet within and across jurisdictions in the monetary union. It would prove to be a powerful especially in case of cross-border transactions, which takes days even within a monetary union, and the cost is also increasing.”
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According to Leila Matroos-Lasten, the acting president of CBCS — the longest-surviving reserve bank in the Americas, having been founded in 1828 — a digital currency will be more compliant with Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) policies and processes.
Matroos-Lasten further added, “The transformational capacity of innovation and technology is been recognized by CBCS and it is devoted to explore solutions regarding the efficiency of cross-jurisdictional transactions and digital payments whilst ensuring compliance and security assurances obtained by these state of the art (fintech) solutions. This would be beneficial to everyone.”
This partnership is not the first between Bitt and central bank. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Bitt, which is partly-owned by Medici Ventures, in March. As per the reports of CCN, the deal was confirmed in the same month on the backdrop of which Medici Ventures raised its stake in the startup to 8.6 per cent.
The deal with ECCB was signed to improve the risk profiling of Eastern Caribbean Currency Union by adding to AML/KYC and Anti-Terrorism Financing measures and processes. In this process, Bitt had to develop, deploy and test technology for ECCB.
