Sand Dollar for a Bahamas small business: what it does and costs

What a Sand Dollar merchant wallet does

Sand Dollar is the digital Bahamian dollar. The Central Bank of The Bahamas issues it, and its own site writes the name both ways, Sand Dollar and SandDollar. You do not open an account with the Central Bank. You open a wallet with one of the payment companies it authorises, and you use that company’s app.

A merchant wallet is the business version. A customer pays you by scanning your QR code, by typing your wallet name, or with a Sand Dollar card. Some providers add more ways to pay in their own wallet apps, which may not be Sand Dollar. SunCash’s merchant webpage, for one, lists a phone number and PIN, a barcode, a typed code or a tap at the till for its own mobile money. The Central Bank also says some till devices take Sand Dollar, debit cards and credit cards in one place.

A card payment can be reversed after the sale, and a Sand Dollar payment generally cannot, a March 2026 research paper by staff of the Central Bank of The Bahamas, the Bank for International Settlements (the BIS, a bank owned by central banks) and other central banks notes. Your wallet also has a holding limit. Money that comes in above the limit moves on to the bank account linked to the wallet.

What you need to open a Sand Dollar business wallet

As of 25 September 2026, the Central Bank’s merchants webpage asks for three things:

• a valid business licence, and your business must appear on the business licence register
• a VAT certificate
• a bank account the wallet is tied to

The VAT certificate can rule out a small business. The Department of Inland Revenue says a business must register for VAT once its taxable sales over 12 months pass $100,000. Below that, registering is a choice, and it brings the duty to charge VAT and file returns. So a small shop may have no VAT certificate to show. The merchants webpage does not say what a business without one should do, so ask the provider, and read the personal-wallet route below.

The Sand Dollar site also has a merchant registration form, where you give your contact details and choose a preferred provider.

A merchant wallet can hold from $8,000 up to $1,000,000, and it has no cap on how many payments it takes in a year.

If you work for yourself, you can start smaller. The Central Bank says a self-employed person “can be treated as an individual based on the observed activity level”. So a sole trader may begin on a personal wallet. With ID, a personal wallet holds up to $8,000 and takes up to $10,000 a month. Once your sales look like a business, the provider has to check, and then either move you to a business wallet or record that your use is not commercial.

Which companies issue Sand Dollar merchant wallets

The Sand Dollar site lists seven authorised wallet providers: OMNi, SunCash, MoneyMaxx, Cash N Go, Kanoo, Mobile Assist and Island Pay.

That list may not match who is signing up businesses today. The March 2026 staff paper counted six active providers in September 2025, against the seven names on the site. The same paper says bringing banks and credit unions into Sand Dollar is “still a work in progress”. So when you call a provider, first ask whether it is taking on new merchants.

What Sand Dollar costs a business

Providers pay the Central Bank nothing to process Sand Dollar payments. Non-bank providers may not charge people for sending Sand Dollar to each other, the staff paper says. They can charge a business for taking payments, and that is where your cost sits.

The Central Bank’s merchants webpage says Sand Dollar has “lower merchant fees than other electronic payments”. It gives no figure. The one figure comes from Central Bank data in the March 2026 staff paper, in US dollars (the Bahamian dollar trades one for one with the US dollar). The paper puts the average charge to businesses at US$0.75 on a US$25 sale, which is 3%. It does not say which year that covers. Debit and credit card fees on the same sale ran from US$0.50 to US$1.50.

On that sale, Sand Dollar cost more than the cheapest card fees and less than the dearest. The paper’s authors read payments in central bank digital money, like Sand Dollar, as generally cheaper than other methods, but on these numbers the saving depends on which card fee you pay today.

What each provider charges you is harder to find. This is what their own webpages showed, in the order the Sand Dollar site lists them.

“Not published” means we did not find it on the provider’s own webpages that day.

Most of these webpages describe the provider’s own wallet and do not mention Sand Dollar. Kanoo’s network takes both its own Kanoo Dollars and Sand Dollars, and its 1.75% does not say which one it covers. Only Mobile Assist names Sand Dollar beside its price. So ask each provider whether its price covers Sand Dollar payments.

Island Pay, the last name on the list, had no website that loaded that day. Cash N Go describes QR payments through its own wallet and claims “lower fees”, with no figure. Kanoo’s FAQ webpage carries no date, and parts of it disagree with other Kanoo webpages, including how merchants are paid, so treat its 1.75% and its payout route as things to confirm. Mobile Assist says its Scan and Pay service takes “all major credit cards & Sand Dollar”. Its Bill Pay service, a payment link or QR code for deposits and prepayments, has the same price. SunCash’s “discount rate” is its fee on each sale, and it does not publish the figure.

Most wallet providers do not publish a merchant price, so the rate is yours to ask for.

Getting your money from Sand Dollar to your bank

Every merchant wallet is tied to a bank account. Money above the wallet’s limit moves across on its own. Below the limit, you move it yourself, and each provider does that its own way. SunCash’s account fee table lists B$1 to withdraw by bank transfer, and Cash N Go lets account holders take cash out at its tellers. Neither webpage says whether that applies to a merchant wallet or to Sand Dollar, so ask. Kanoo’s Bank Pay Out webpage says a business can send its balance to its bank account, but its older FAQ still says merchants are paid by cheque, so ask which applies and what it costs.

The link between wallets and banks exists, but few people use it yet. By September 2025 there had been 652 top-ups from bank accounts into wallets and 105 withdrawals from wallets to banks, the staff paper reports. In its 2024 annual report, the Central Bank said providers had not fully built the low-cost link to the ACH into their apps. The ACH is the automated clearing house, the system banks use to move money between each other.

How widely Sand Dollar is used so far

Many people have opened a Sand Dollar wallet, but most keep little in it. The March 2026 staff paper counted more than 142,000 wallets in September 2025. That same month about B$2.1 million was held in Sand Dollar, the Central Bank’s August 2026 statistical digest shows. Spread across those wallets, that is under B$15 each on average. By June 2026 the total was about B$2.5 million, about a third of one percent of the B$712 million in notes and coins.

Merchant wallets have more than tripled. The staff paper counted 1,938 merchant wallets in September 2025, up from 565 in January 2022. Shops have kept signing up while customer balances stayed small, so the lag now sits with customers more than with shops.

For an owner, that means few customers will ask to pay this way yet, even those who have a wallet. A merchant wallet adds a way to be paid, and cash and cards stay the main ones.

In 2022 the Governor gave four reasons for slow take-up, as reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Merchants did not sign up. Wallets were not linked to banking for merchant accounts. Banks and credit unions were slow to join. Public education fell short. The Kansas City Fed author added that people may see no added value over what they already use.

Fees matter to small businesses in particular. In September 2025 the Governor said a Central Bank survey found micro and small businesses use cash more than larger firms, with “the merchant fee structure cited as a dis-incentive” to taking cards. One Bahamian software developer who has tried to sell Sand Dollar payments to businesses since 2021 wrote in September 2026 that withdrawal fees leave money sitting in wallets. That fits the low bank-transfer counts above.

The March 2026 staff paper names what would help: clearer public information, “low but non-zero pricing for merchants” so that providers can keep offering the service, and bringing the banks in.

Where Sand Dollar helps a business today

Customers who pay cash or have no bank account. The lowest tier of personal Sand Dollar wallet is open to people without a bank account, and it needs no government ID, the Sand Dollar site says. Payment apps already reach many people. Non-bank payment companies hold accounts for about one in five account holders in The Bahamas, but they carry less than two percent of retail payments, the Governor said in September 2025. So plenty of customers have an app, and few pay with it at the till. For a food shop, a liquor store or a takeaway where most customers pay cash, Sand Dollar is a way to be ready for those who want to pay by phone.

Cash costs in the Family Islands. Moving cash around the Family Islands is very costly, the Governor said in the same speech. He said Sand Dollar may allow “more affordable, but admittedly subsidised, access to cash services” there.

New ways to load and spend a wallet. In March 2026 OMNi announced a nationwide network of two-way ATMs that turn cash into Sand Dollar and back. The Eye Witness News report of the launch gave no count of machines in service. SunCash says it has a kiosk “on every single island, rock and cay”. In August 2026 SunCash launched a Visa debit card that customers load from their SunCash balance, for places where Sand Dollar is not taken. SunCash said then that the card would reach the Family Islands by September 2026, so ask whether it is available on your island. More ways to put cash into a wallet, and to spend from it, give customers more reason to hold one.

Orders taken in a chat. If customers order by WhatsApp, a provider’s payment link or QR code can go straight into the conversation. The WhatsApp door guide covers setting up that number for business.

What changes next for Sand Dollar and bank transfers

The Central Bank chose Montran in March 2026 to build a Fast Payment System, targeted for the first quarter of 2027 and designed to work with Sand Dollar. SunCash says money sent around the islands on its own network can take up to 48 hours to arrive, and expects the Fast Payment System to make that instant. What the Fast Payment System will change covers what instant transfers could mean for you.

The banks may also change. In July 2024 the Governor told Reuters that rules requiring commercial banks to offer Sand Dollar access should be in place within two years. In October 2025 the Central Bank proposed low-cost basic bank accounts that work with digital wallets, Sand Dollar included, with the rules due in force before the end of the first half of 2026. Those accounts are for individuals. In July 2026 the Central Bank said its next step would be a further consultation on proposed interim guidance for basic bank accounts. Ask your bank whether your account can send money to and receive money from a Sand Dollar wallet.