 So when we talk about payment system innovation, it's about economic growth and resilience. ECB is very happy to partner once again with the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council this year for their week. The focus of their week is embracing competitiveness through research and innovation and I am particularly proud to be a employee of the central bank because you know when you have central banks you think of an institution that's far removed from what is happening on the ground and what is happening in country. But my central bank, our central bank is in the forefront of competitiveness and innovation. We were the first bank, we are the first bank in the Caribbean to come out with a full suite of polymer notes. We did that, we launched that earlier this year and I think that was just amazing. For a little bank, it countries the smallest in the Caribbean and we were able to come out with a full suite of polymer notes, new notes for our people in the ECCU and in addition to it being a full suite of notes, we are the only ones with a feature for the blind and visually impaired and if that's not innovative I don't know what is. And I think we stopped there, no, we went on. Everybody's talking about digital currency, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the likes and all the other currencies and we, through our governor, looked at it and said how can we use that to make the lives of our citizens better and he came up with the idea of a digital EC dollar. So you have the EC dollar that is backed, well backed and now you have it in another format which will open up so many avenues for the people of the ECU and Sybil is here today to tell us about this digital currency. Sybil has worked on, Sybil is part of the project team at ECCB that's making this happen and so I am very pleased that the governor was in full agreement to having Sybil come in person to do this presentation for us. The World Economic Forum opines that over the next decade 70% of all value created will be based on the digital economy and hence the ECCB's venture into a digital EC currency is to ensure that we in this eight member state are present in our future. It's about ensuring that we are transforming our economies in a manner that allows us not to be behind the curve but to be with and even ahead of the curve. So here we are today talking about DXCD, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank's digital EC currency pilot project. The project has been captioned the name DXCD Carrivo. Taken into consideration both our digital trajectory as we move forward as well as our Caribbean essence. What is the digital EC currency, this DXCD? Many persons, the first thing you want to know about your money is security right? So it is a secure, it's very accessible, accessible whether you have a bank account or not. It's innovative, it's leveraging technology and it's providing what other alternative electronic payments cannot provide which is real-time settlement. The only other payment instrument that provides real-time settlement is cash. But we know cash is sometimes cumbersome, you have to have storage, you have to think about the security of it when you're moving around with it, it is costly to move around. And so what we have done is said what are the pain points for consumers, businesses, institutions and how can we address the pain points by making more efficient payment systems? And we say money makes the world go round. Well the speed at which money goes around helps to drive efficiencies into our institutions and into our economy. So if we can have a faster payment instrument that is secure then we are helping to transform our economies and to make them very much appropriate to drive the growth and all of the expectations and aspirations of our people. In 2017 when we launched our strategic plan, five strategic plan 2017 to 2021, Governor Antwine in his remark said imagine an Eastern Caribbean currency union where businesses are globally competitive. Both businesses and industries are globally competitive. Where young people are productively engaged and full of hope and our people are not just striving but they are thriving and it's that imagine that has brought us to this point of a digital easy currency. Now I want to start off to let you know what it is not. I told you what it is. Let's make sure you clearly distinguish between the EC's digital currency DXCD that is in development and what has been out for the last 10 plus years. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. There's a big difference. A cryptocurrency is a private issued currency. There is no guarantor. You get in and you are supposed to ensure you understand the risk. If something goes south there's nobody to call. So it is get in, understand what you're getting into and so there goes the difference between this digital EC currency DXCD in development and cryptocurrencies. This you have trust. The issue of where is the back where is the guarantee with your easy currency whether it's physical or digital you know who the guarantor is right. The guarantor is the issuer ECCB and what makes you confident in that guarantee is that we have foreign reserves. Those are investments made mainly in U.S. denominated securities that ensures that you can freely move between EC and U.S. currency. So that is why you don't have exchange rates restrictions. Okay. You don't have exchange not exchange rate but exchange restrictions. You can go to the financial institution and you can get your U.S. currency once you provide all of the know your customer source of income information if it's once it exceeds a certain amount. And so it's that issue of trust in the EC currency which gives confidence to our currency whether it's digital or physical in a cryptocurrency. No one has that liability or that guarantee. And that is a distinction. So when you're talking about digital currencies understand that a sovereign currency from a central bank is completely distinct from a private currency whether it's in digital form or not issued by a private entity. We're clear. We're good so far. So what are these features because if it's digital it means it's not physically tangible right. You can feel it. You can touch it. It is not like your paper your polymer. But what it does have is the characteristics that gives you that confidence in our currency. It is sovereign. It's legal tender. It has the same parity with the U.S. dollar. We say 2.7 of fixed exchange rate for your physical EC notes and coins in the same way your digital EC DX CD it's 2.7 and both of them are interchangeable with each other interoperable. So one digital currency equals one X CD physical EC coins and notes. It's we spoke about who is the backstop. Who is the guarantor. It's easy CB. But we are not our intention is not to get rid of cash. No we want to reduce cash to a point at which we have an optimal level of cash but it will continue to co-circulate with physical EC notes and coins with other payment instruments like your debit cards and your credit cards we're hoping however that we will reduce the use of checks and we will reduce the use of physical notes and coins. Our objective is to get cash down by 50 percent and to reduce significantly the use of checks. They're costly. The whole idea of reconciliation and chasing bad checks takes up resources that could be put to more productive use as opposed to transactional use. It will be distributed by our financial institutions our banks our credit unions and other approved service providers and because it's digital it's going to be transacted on a platform that you and I are accustomed to. That is your smart device be it your tablet your cell phone or other smart devices that we use to communicate with. When we look at the region the region's penetration of cell phones is almost two hundred percent. It's almost 200 percent. What we have to then change how we use the phone not just for talk but to use it for more productive means and here lies where we can leverage a digital EC currency to achieve that. It is not a savings instrument so once you take off X amount from your bank to move into a digital currency it no longer leverages interest. So you're only taking off that amount that you need for transaction purposes and that allows for planning and for the stability of the financial system and for your own wealth creation. So we don't want this to be a competition between bank deposits but what we want to allow is persons would save what they need to save and move to a transactional platform leveraging the DXCD to make their payments more efficiently more effectively in a frictionless environment and so when we talk about frictions we're talking about cost right. You and I know it costs a lot for a checkbook. It costs a lot to merchants to have a card infrastructure. Some persons may have to pay three and a half percent or more if you're in a business where your margins are slim that three and a half can eat into your bottom line and make it really a disincentive for you to allow those card payments because remember you also have to pay for the machinery as well. So we have to pay Visa, Mastercard, AmEx all of these persons that's money going through the window which is not being used for productive means. So we have to change how we see productivity that we need to maximize how our money gets back to us and that's part of building growth competitiveness and resilience into our financial infrastructure and architecture. It's a peer-to-peer architecture, peer-to-peer you to me which means as we speak about bringing the region closer together regional integration we say we have a single financial and economic space and the sea that divides us should not be an impediment for us to move as if we are one solid productive block. If we are sending money to another person in another country regardless if it's the same financial institution or not there should be no reason why if I'm to send $200 to send Lucia I'm going to pay 50 something dollars to send it right away that creates barriers to integration and those barriers really impede our growth and development because it impedes what can be as our governor says and what should be. It impedes the possibility of new business formation of new business creation of business expansion of payment efficiency so that when I as a small business gets paid it should not take me three or four days to get funds into my resources because then what I have to do then is maybe take an overdraft until those funds come so my cost of operating actually erodes my potential to survive in that industry and so when I go belly up then all the creditors now end up with a non-performing loan you see it's an ecosystem a vicious cycle if we don't make it more efficient and more workable for us in our mission we said advancing the good of the people of the eastern caribbean currency union by ensuring stability at both at the monetary level and the financial level but also advancing development and growth and for development and growth to happen there has to be a transformation it can't be business as usual because for growth to happen you must advance there must be something that changes and more than just change around the edges for growth to happen you must have transformation so why a digital e-c currency matters it matters for everyone whether it's the eccb whether it's the financial institutions whether it's businesses or whether it's consumers it matters because what you have in a digital currency is information economic intelligence business intelligence and if eccb has better intelligence in real time its policies can then be more prescriptive because it has real time information so it knows how money is moving in real time to various sectors it can analyze and really assess what's going on in the economy in real time you know sometimes you see us put out statistics because we have to liaise with the the the statisticians on the ground in the offices of the government ministries you will see a lot of times we have estimates because the data is not available now the whole idea of data management and data analytics is that you get information that allows you to make informed decisions and that goes for all of us you know you have your your your financial information in your head you go to the bank you say i need this i can afford this and it asks you for financial statements and you know you don't have financial statements but if you can pull the information from your digital transactions you can then show the bank cash coming in and some cash going out and that allows you also for your own planning you don't have to say i had x amount of money i wonder what i spend it on and the small business operator won't have to be looking around the shoulder every time someone gives them money for goods and services and they pull out a big wad of money and they feel uncomfortable wondering can i potentially be a target because i've exposed all my business and think about the young people who want to go into business but can't afford an online payment infrastructure that they can leverage this and they can offer businesses and services not just in their own country but outside of their country leveraging the buying potential of the region imagine the amount of consultancy services i can stay from my home and advise persons i can counsel i might be a fitness expert that i can counsel you i mean might be someone in health expert i can counsel you and get paid and as one pastor said to me well now i can have my online ministry and everybody just send me their tides because one dollar fills up basket right he says i get from my us listeners paypal it takes another month to come but i get it but my all nationals all they do is send a text and say love the sermon pastor but nothing comes okay and so we have to expand our thinking of what is possible and as our governor says what could be and what should be so new payment channels new business models reduction in cost um if i could just pull this up for businesses operational inefficiencies how much time we spend if you are big business trying to tally for your sales clerks and you're out twenty dollars you're out a hundred dollars and you spend all night chasing this outage and then you pay three hundred dollars in overtime to find one hundred dollars how much time businesses have to be dealing with paper records and the storage of these records when if we had some other alternative which is secure which gives us the efficiencies that this will facilitate that and in doing business invariably when you're dealing with cash money goes through the door it walks away it has legs whether because of mistakes or because someone wants to increase their pay in an unauthorized manner with a digital architecture this can't happen and while someone might say well we have infrastructure right now the cost is prohibited so being able to access something has a lot to do it can i afford it in order to say it's accessible in doing this architecture governance for any sovereign currency governance is critical one wants to make sure that the profile of the e-c currency that we have trusted since 1965 remains intact and so governance issues covering regulatory compliance ability to monitor the process integrity the legality the data analysis all of these are embedded in the architecture of the e-c currency the digital e-c currency dxcd so users will be able to leverage all of the features of security legal tender confidentiality which speaks to having privacy and trust payment efficiency innovation and governance and also it's important to talk about the user experience you and i want to use technology that is easy to use seamless to use that when we're using it we don't have to think about it just like how you log on to your amazon app and you shop till you drop which you shouldn't but sometimes we do because what amazon does it uses that data analytics you ever realize every time you go it has a new suggestion based on your patterns even if you just say a word it looks like the phone is listening to you it is it gives you recommendations to a conversation you may have had that's the business intelligence imagine if businesses can leverage that data analytics instead of sending a generic ad to everybody the day i got office furniture from a business i don't need office furniture but the things i need based on my shopping patterns they're not able to tell me those but a digital currency can provide that information in a cost effective manner so what does this framework look like who are the components of the ecosystem well eccb is at the top most the certificate authority it's a sovereign currency we are the only authorized institution to issue ec the same as the only authorized to issue digital currency which is a dxcd so we as a central bank will authorize other participants financial institutions and other institutions approved to facilitate the circulation of the currency at the first level and then these institution financial institutions and and agencies will then authorize or onboard consumers and merchants and so what you have is a sort of tree sort of architecture that branches out allowing to ensure governance security and convenience every time we talk about the digital economy one has to talk about cyber security that is important because you want to make sure that the architecture is trusted now unlike bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when you hear about blockchain technology all blockchain is not the same you can have one that is permission private or you can have one that is public bitcoin is a public and so everyone goes on everyone can facilitate mining which produces more bitcoins and everyone can have a view of the ledger to get a sense of who are the persons on there there's no privacy there you may not know the exact name of the person who is at that address but you can see what's going on but you don't want that for a sovereign currency where confidentiality trust and security and privacy are paramount in the minds of users and so this architecture is private and permission permission meaning you only can be part of this ecosystem if you are granted access and the access to one person is not the same access to another person you get the credentials for the level of access you are granted so of course as a consumer I would have a different level of access to a financial institution to a merchant to other ecosystem players and that allows for that confidentiality and that security and that's important so you recognize that you have secured credentials management and you have encryption of all information end-to-end from the source to the destination and at rest and only those everybody understand encryption right you encrypt something it means remember when we were small we would be telling stories and we make up a language and only those who are in the group would understand that language that's encryption so we say I don't know what that means but somebody in that group sometimes you would use the first two letters of the word and the last two letters and you create something we used to call it pig latin or something you all didn't have any or you creole okay but no creole is not a creole is not an encrypted language because it's a language that is understood by many okay and I don't speak creole but because of the French I can understand if I break it down slowly so that's the issue of encryption it means that even if someone gets access they can't understand the information you see enough of those spy movies right with Tom Cruise okay but that's the importance of that that is to ensure privacy and security the issue of you have to be authorized the issue of authentication and the issue of making sure you have multi-factor authentication meaning it's not just one thing that someone is going to ask you the system is going to ask you to verify you are who you are you have multiple several things that you have to do to prove that you are who you say you are before you are granted access and that is important for that we spoke about the issue of authorized permissioned entities and employees and just to give you a little idea about how this blockchain works why is it called block and chain well and I must invite you to to visit our website where we have our first newsletter dxcd times where we speak about what blockchain is about and some features of the digital ec currency that you can share with your colleagues and family members but imagine when you think about a ledger a ledger is just an accounting framework where you keep information so what this distributed ledger or blockchain does is just to make it electronic but the benefit is that you have by being distributed even if one copy of the ledger is compromised you don't lose the information if one copy of the ledger goes down for example if something happens you don't lose the data because you have other copies and all copies reflect the same truth but why is it called blockchain because the information the data is aggregated into a block and each subsequent grouping of data is linked to the one that went before it previously creating a chain and this gives the strength because you it makes it tamper tamper proof because to tamper with one you have to tamper with all which is impossible so because each one references the one that went before it and so that is what gives the idea of resilience and security in this architecture now how do you and I come into this you're going to have an app that you download whether from the android or the ios the apple store so it's both compatible whatever platform you're on you're going to download the app and you're going to link to a service provider be it a bank a credit union or some other authorized provider and i'm going to give you a poster to look at in a little while for you to tell us if the poster speaks to what you're looking for and how we can enhance it now you download this you select your service provider you will go through your kyc know your customer and it's important remember we said there's no illicit business on this network you have to be able to identify who you are it's not that anybody's going to be watching what you're doing but to get on to so one time a one time screening you give information just like how you do when you're opening a bank account you give information detailing who you are that gives you access and you can onboard electronically so you don't have to physically get to any institution from the from your privacy of your home you can just stay there and upload information that is required using your business id your national id some approved id take a picture of yourself so that the two can be verified using biometrics and once the information is validated by the institution you go ahead you'll get access you can then buy your mobile um banking or physical but it might be easy if you do it mobile you then decide i want to take a hundred dollars from my credit union account for my banking account and i convert it to um digital currency you can also have the ability to go physically to a service provider and provide them with cash and you get digital ec currency dxcd which is why we say you don't have to have a an account with a bank or a credit union you there are ways to meet the needs of various participating persons who are part of the ecosystem for the pilot and then you go to a merchant who is part of this pilot project and you just use your dxcd app to scan to pay once you scan you pay and within seconds you get a transaction confirmation and settlement happens instantaneously so it's not that you have to wait three days the merchant doesn't have to wait three days the same when you have to transfer you're putting the person's um address and you're putting the amount you want to transfer and the money is transferred you see a confirmation in your wallet application if your balance was 500 and you'd spent a hundred your new balance would reflect 400 and the person's balance will reflect the increase of the hundred with whom you did the transaction with now we have two models we have two models there's the value base wallet and there's the registered base wallet the value base wallet says i don't want to leverage the custody the custodian services of any service provider to secure my credentials that is my credentials to authorize payments i want these credentials to be securely stored with my smart device and i'm responsible for ensuring the protection of that device what is clear for that so you don't have to leverage the services of any institution for custody the second is the registered and the second says and businesses would want this i don't want my security credentials to just be resident on my smart device i want those credentials to be able to be stored by some service provider and when i i want to accept or make a payment some interface some application program interface would facilitate the messaging between my smart device and the service provider who has custody of my security credentials and this happens seamlessly within a matter of two seconds so there's no pause in that payment but you're behind the scenes it is happening and so you have two models because we know it's not a one size fit all there are various needs by various entities be they consumers or enterprises that will allow for the customization of this architecture what are we speaking about in all of these things we had the industrial revolution so now we're at the fourth revolution now the digital economy revolution and as i said at the eastern cabernet central bank we are pursuing this because we want to be present in our future we want the region to be present in what's going on in the digital economy that's taking place we don't want to be left behind so we're pursuing sustained ecu transformation that improves lives this goes back to our mission advancing the good of the people of the region through monetary and financial stability as well as driving economic growth and development so when we talk about payment system innovation it's about economic growth and resilience the more that we can make our economy resilient it's the more that we can ensure that we can sustain shocks of hurricanes world economic changes the more we can ensure the livelihood of our people it's about financial inclusion the more we can bring the informal sector into the formal sector it will be to their best interest to give them the security and the innovation that will help to increase their business potential it's about the competitiveness of the region at the central bank we have established that we want to be in the top 50 in the ranking of ease of doing business think St Lucia is around 93 from 2019 so you're far still from 50 but you are the closest there because at the the other spectrum we have Senkets at 140 Grenada 147 somewhere around there so but 93 is not where our target is it's at 50 and part of the ease of doing business is what is the architecture for persons to transact in businesses to get access to credit to open a business and it's a digital economy that will allow for this transformation and so the digital e-c currency the dxcd is part of this entire framework and vision of a ecu digital economy in his book flawless execution the author says if you're going after a particular goal everyone must understand what success looks like so for us everyone residents citizens businesses governments all sectors must know what is the success benchmarks where do we see the regions payment architecture five years after mass deployment of dxcd we see cash being reduced by 50 that is the goal not away from cash but allowing cash to be reduced by 50 which is optimal right now cash takes up about 80 to 90 percent of all transactions and about 44 percent of all value that is a lot of transactions in terms of inefficiencies in terms of cost that is weighing down the productivity potential of the region we need to reduce it by 50 checks business said to me if you can get rid of checks you would solve all my problems at least 99 problems just leave in one it is costly for reconciliation it is costly for all of the things you have to do with checks not to mention it goes against a green economy so if we can reduce checks by 80 percent we're there credit cards will continue this is not a credit instrument it's a payment instrument you can't overdrive cash in the same way this is cash just in digital form so it will not impact the prospects of credit cards for debit cards it will still they will still continue to increase because your debit card can be used outside of the region and easy currency is only legal tender within the region so you only can use your cash within the region whether it's digital or physical the same applies electronic payments electronic funds transfers we're hoping that institutions and governments instead of writing checks because we want to reduce it by 80 percent we'll use the electronic funds transfers in many modern economies checks do not exist and then the green the light the new growth the green shoots our dxcd eccb's your digital ec currency will take now all of the reduction usage from cash and checks will then be used in digital currency that is the vision do you get the picture do i hear the picture over here that's what we're looking for that's the vision a more efficient payment system that can drive eccb's growth competitiveness resilience and financial inclusion as i close just want to to get when we spoke about this how you do the process really in four simple steps you download the digital wallet application from whether it's the apple store or the android store you select a participating financial institution or service provider to gain access to the network that means you have to go through your know your customer and then you just request cash either from converting some of your deposits to digital currency you're going to get a poster to comment on or you can use physical cash ec notes to to make that cash in cash out you make your payment once you scan the payment is made instant payment settlement and then almost instant confirmation of your transaction it's really about secure simple accessible innovative payment instrument so merchants will be able to use the app to do your point of sale you would be able to have only small requirements a tablet a smartphone can work you can create your digital qr code which is just a code that you scan or you can actually have it paper based where you just take it to the wall of your truck if you're or your store and the person just scans it with their app on their phone and so it allows you to either be fully electronic or not in terms of what hardware that you want to leverage with this and it has a telefeature where for those merchants who are part of the pilot arrangement and based on what eccb's policy is it could allow merchants to also provide cash in and cash out facilities this is on the discussion of how we would pursue this within the issue of security and confidence in the currency um i just want to let you know where we are at we're now several months into the project 12 months is for development and six months is for actual live testing of the digital currency where customers will on board they will convert their deposits to digital currency that portion they want to spend during the pilot or they will cash in physical ec notes and coins for that and then they will then spend of course during the six months all who sign up to be the pilot and are given access will have incentives like any promotion any pilot we want to make sure everyone is involved everyone has the ability to access this to spend it and to benefit from that experience because while you're benefiting from that experience we are learning your patterns your behaviors what you like what you don't like and so of course we're going to incentivize can't tell you what that would look like but i promise to you that you will enjoy the incentives that i can guarantee so as we conclude what do we want you to leave with that the vision is for the digital ec currency to be part of a new digital economy for the region to move the region into a modern economy many times we think the Caribbean has to be last forget that we are smart enough we are innovative enough to lead our own trajectory towards competitiveness growth and inclusion holders of this digital ec currency dxcd will enjoy the same benefits that they have when they're holding physical ec notes and coins they can use it with vendors on the street they can use it with brick and mortar stores they can use it online and as securities paramount in our architecture design we want to let you know that the security is based on best practices built in to the architecture so we're at this juncture where we recognize that our growth needs to be at a minimum of five percent and none of our regions economists have reached five percent and five percent is just the minimum but we also recognize we are at a watershed moment where we need a transformation to get us to that and beyond that five percent growth we recognize we need our government the debt to gdp should be 60 percent minimum 60 percent that should be the maximum of your debt to gdp not minimum maximum your debt to gdp maximum should be 60 percent it's now around 68 percent on average across the region only one country sank its and nevis reached that 60 percent to date on the regional level it's around 68 percent which is good because a few years before i think around 2014 it was about 78.2 percent it's now about 68.1 give or take a little basis points and so we are moving in the right direction but we recognize that it just takes a hurricane or something else if we are not having a new economic paradigm for us to slip again because guess what we are in all cyclical industries what does that mean it means cyclical industries require persons to have surplus income so given that we are open economies and we trade and we depend on persons having a lot of surplus income to drive our tourism and manufacturing exports and other businesses that now we can then leverage those into jobs through construction real estate services if we do not have a new paradigm to drive that resilience it means as the economies keep going up and down so will ours but with technology you can create what you call a defensive economy so you mix both your cyclical service and industries and your defensive industries and a lot of those are in technology and so we're looking for this transformation to drive our regions resilience and competitiveness it needs transformation we're on board are you