["Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Volume 47, Issue 1, Page 131-150, January 2026. ", "\nCentral banks across the globe are currently engaged in an array of experimental projects with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that intervene in the digital transformation of payments. The Bahamas has been circulating the first‐issued CBDC since 2020, Project SandDollar (PSD), to advance financial inclusion in the archipelagic state. Despite public messaging, however, whether the Bahamian CBDC would fulfil its goals remains debatable. Informed by primary data collected through 15 elite interviews and secondary data analysis, this paper hereby attempts to unpack the rationales behind the variegated issuance of CBDCs in the empirical case of the Bahamian PSD to analyse how the state could strategically mobilise it for its own purposes. Firstly, the research proposes theorising payment relations as an important dynamic of monetary statecraft, foregrounding how weaker states and central banks may intervene in payment relations in response to domestic and external pressures. Secondly, PSD demonstrates that the Bahamian domestic and international relations are rewired through the state‐led digitalisation of payment relations and shifting relationships with public and private actors. Taken together, this paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of CBDCs from state and finance perspectives and to current debates on the global development of CBDCs.\n"]