Digital payment wallet, Lynk, is hoping to tap into the multibillion-dollar market of monetary transactions that exists in Jamaica.

Digital payment wallets are the platforms used to facilitate transactions of the Bank of Jamaica’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

In Jamaica, approximately $10 trillion in transactions occur annually across all sectors, 80 per cent of which are cash transactions. 

Denise Williams, chief growth officer at Lynk, told JIS News that the company is eyeing how they can make a greater impact in the growing digital market.

“We have not yet reached $10 billion in transactions, but we are certainly aiming to get there, guided by our vision for financial inclusion and providing a safe, secure and convenient payment platform for all Jamaicans,” Williams explained.

CBDC is a digital form of central bank-issued currency and is legal tender that can be exchanged dollar for dollar with physical cash. Jamaica’s CBDC is called JAM-DEX, which stands for Jamaica Digital Exchange.

With an injection of more than $250 million in JAM-DEX incentives into the Lynk ecosystem, along with customers putting cash into their Lynk wallets, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions have taken place on its platform since inception.

Customers are transferring money to friends and family, paying bills and making mobile top-ups.

“There is an opportunity to grow because we see how we can advance the journey of financial inclusion. It will impact how people can save, get loans, insurance and how they can better plan for their families. It is really about bringing the unbanked and the underbanked into the financial system,” Williams said.

Lynk is currently the only approved wallet provider of JAM-DEX.

Meanwhile, John-Matthew Sinclair, chief product officer at Lynk, conceded that the digital wallet is fairly new to Jamaica and during this stage of the process they do have some limitations.

“We do have ambitions to interface with the larger digital wallets in America where we have a large diaspora. Access to that type of network will have benefits to the holder of popular international digital wallets and Lynk,” Sinclair said.

“The company (Lynk) has been able to work out the technical hurdles that will allow interoperability locally through the CBDC network, and, eventually, we also aspire to do the same with international wallets-based regulatory approval and international money transfer services,” he added.