70% of Jamaican population will adopt CBDC within 5 years, PM says

Jamaica’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Evolves into Hot Topic Successfully completed the first pilot test Early January.

Following the test, the country’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness spoke confidently about the adoption of CBDC in the country.

Holness predicts that the majority of Jamaicans will adopt digital currencies soon, and that more than 70% will use CBDCs within five years.Jamaican Prime Minister Highlights Lower Banking Costs and CBDC Inclusion in Bloomberg interview, adding that a digital currency would ensure greater government accountability due to easier tracking of public resources.

Holness acknowledged that the initial challenge for a planned nationwide rollout of a CBDC in the first quarter of 2022 was that the government had to “figure out how to give people access to digital devices and the internet in general.”

The country’s central bank, the Bank of Jamaica, has become a pioneer in the CBDC effort, with one of the world’s first completed nationwide pilot projects.After working with Irish Cryptography Digital Currency Mint March 2021, the central bank conducted an eight-month pilot.

related: UK Economic Affairs Committee Not Believed in Prospects of Retail CBDC

As Cointelegraph reported, the bank has minted 230 million Jamaican Dollars (JMD) ($1.5 million) worth of CBDC for issuance to depository institutions and authorized payment service providers. The BOJ then issued 1 million JMD ($6,500) of CBDC to staff in the Bank of Japan’s banking sector, and another 5 million JMD ($32,000) to the country’s main financial institution, the National Commercial Bank.

The Bank of Japan aims to add two new wallet providers to its CBDC before rolling it out nationwide in the first quarter of this year. The central bank also plans to focus on interoperability by testing transactions between clients of different wallet providers.