Bank of Jamaica To Deploy 230 Million Jamaican Dollar CBDC by March

At the moment CBDCs is all the hype in the world. With many countries coming out with their own digital currencies it’s not surprising that the financial system of the world is potentially shifting towards the digital alternative. The latest in that mix is Jamaica which is actually a step ahead of expectations.

The Jamaican Dollar

Last December the central bank of the country announced that they had completed their pilot project of issuing 230 million Jamaican Dollars in digital currency. 

Today one of the bank officials announced that the Bank of Jamaica is going to get the ball rolling for an expected launch of the Jamaican Dollar digital currency in the first quarter of this year.

Recently in an interview with Reuters, the deputy governor of the banking and currency sector operations and financial markets infrastructure, said that they aim at including as many financially excluded Jamaicans as they possibly can using CBDCs.

She further added:

“To get those persons into the formal financial system, we decided that the central bank digital currency would be a good opportunity.”

In doing so the central bank plans on replacing at least 5% of the existing Jamaican dollars with the new CBDC every year.

As it is the country has not placed any kind of ban or regulation on crypto assets but neither is it given the status of legal tender. However, CBDCs coming into use might also attract non-crypto-associated people to join the virtual assets market.

Other Countries’ CBDCs

In line with the developments of Jamaica, today the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Affairs of India also announced the country’s plans of launching a ‘Digital Rupee’ in the fiscal year of 2022-23.

Plus presently there are over 57 other countries that are in the research and development stages of the CBDC program. It may not be too long before they join the bandwagon as well.