The rollout of BiMPay, Barbados’ national instant payment system, has been delayed until June 12, 2026.
Governor of the Central Bank, Dr The Most Honourable Kevin Greenidge gave the update yesterday at the Courtney Blackman Grande Salle. BiMPay was originally scheduled to go live on March 31.
“The system is ready but what we are doing now is making sure that every bank, every credit union is ready to connect reliably to the system. We’ve already built infrastructure, we built what we call the industry repayment rail. It has been tested. Our infrastructure is stable and secure,” Greenidge announced.
He said the update was being given because he has always been upfront with the public.
“When I said earlier that it will be ready and safe, I meant that it is ready. But what remains to be done, what is required by design, is that every participating institution, every bank, every credit union, the Accountant General Office, the Barbados Stock Exchange, all of them must now connect and be fully tested before we allow a single transaction to go through the system.”
Greenidge said this was not a formality, but the main point because BiMPay must be reliable across the full financial network to be a true national system. He said they would not launch a partial system.
The Governor said they were in the final stages of testing where each institution must be able to communicate with the other in real time and that was taking longer than originally anticipated.
Having undertaken an assessment, it was decided June 12 would be the start date and all financial institutions that are ready at that time will launch.
“Any institution that does not meet those standards will be excluded,” Greenidge said, “the launch will not be held back because of the tardiness of one party.” (SAT)
