Encouraging payments in CBDC for Christmas work programmes

Durran Pate/Contributor

The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is stepping up the marketing of its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) named JamDex, as a payment method.

To this end, Jamaica’s Central Bank plans to host Christmas work programmes in December to encourage individuals to make their payments in JamDex. In addition, the BOJ and mobile wallet provider, Lynk are also working together to enroll corner shops and pan chicken vendors to interact with the mobile wallet while making payments with JamDex.

Also, the BOJ is partnering with the Government to boost the adoption of JamDex as a payment method. This is being done by targeting payment to social protection programmes to attain substantial inclusion and adoption of the CBDC.

Jamaica’s CBDC expansion began this year via Lynk and, up to the end of September, this brought about 115,000 subscribers, who have executed 146,000 transactions, which is exceedingly low, given the purpose of JamDex of bringing more people into the formal financial system.

Surveys have shown that more than 500,000 Jamaicans hardly even interact with the local financial sector, as most people in Jamaica earn wages in cash and spend it without interacting with players in the financial services sector.

Other plans being looked at to boost JamDex transactions in Jamaica include educating the public on the difference between the Jamaican CBDC and cryptocurrencies as well as the security of the digital currency. Dr Novelette Panton, division chief at the BOJ’s Financial Markets Infrastructure Division, pointed to the importance of targeting social security payments.

Speaking at a conference addressing ‘Digital Currency’ recently, Panton argued: “When we look at the persons we have, Government in any country is the largest payer. So we are going after government payments in that we have welfare payments, social benefit payments, the payments that are made to schoolchildren, payments to persons for housing benefits.”