In a recent update, it was reported that the Bank of Jamaica will partner with the Government to drive the adoption of its central bank digital currencyJamDex, as a payment method.

Citing Sunday’s report, Jamaica’s CBDC expansion began this year through a mobile wallet provider, Lynk, and as of the end of September, brought in around 115,000 subscribers executing 146,000 transactions.

However, considering the number of people expected to interact with the financial sector in a country, that number seems relatively low.

Dr. Novelette Panton, Division Chief of the Financial Markets Infrastructure Division of the Bank of Jamaica, in a conference on “Digital Currency”, stated that attracting more people to the financial system is one of the main reasons for establishing CBDC, JamDex.

According to the report, surveys show that more than 500,000 Jamaicans barely interact with the local financial sector. It may be because people in Jamaica earn cash wages and spend them without interacting with players in the financial services sector.

As a result, the Central Bank of Jamaica will target government payment to social protection programs to achieve substantial inclusion and adoption of CBDC.

“When we look at the people we have, the government of any country pays the most,” said Dr. Novelette Panton. She added: “So we go after government payments where we have welfare payments, welfare payments, payments that are made to school-age children, payments to people for housing benefits.”

Other plans declared by Panton, according to the report on how Jamaica’s central bank will push JamDex further, include educating the public about the difference between JamDex and CRYPTOCURRENCIES as well as the security of the digital currency.

Additionally, the Central Bank of Jamaica will host Christmas work programs this December to encourage people to make their payments in CBDCs.

Jamaica’s central bank and mobile wallet provider Lynk are also working together to enroll corner shops and chicken vendors to interact with the mobile wallet while making JamDex payments.

It is worth noting that this news comes months after the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) suggested that the authority should obtain a court order to track CBDC transactions other than wallet holders and issuers, as CBDCs, such emerging digital currencies, they do not have a different code that can be traced.

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