Jamaica minted its first central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2021 which officially went live in 2022. However, despite plans for all banks to provide CBDC wallets, so far there’s just one, National Commercial Bank (NCB) Jamaica. Its CEO is not particularly bullish on the JAM-DEX CBDC project.
Last Friday was the bank’s financial results announcement. CEO Bruce Bowen noted that its banking wallet Lynk has very successful volumes, but not the CBDC that’s also available within the wallet.
“It is simpler for people to use Lynk today without converting to CBDC,” said Mr Bowen, according to Radio Jamaica News. “And the question that certainly we’ve raised, and there is dialogue going on, is it worth putting a lot of effort into eliminating that friction to use CBDC? Or, as an industry and a society, are we better to put that investment into just building the ecosystem?”
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