Jamaica Completed Its CBDC Pilot And Expects Rollout In 2022

Jamaica completed its CBDC pilot and expects a rollout later in 2022 as we can see more in today’s crypto latest news.

The Jamaican central bank announced that it successfully completed the trial of its central bank digital currency. The pilot lasted for eight months and was initially delayed due to unspecified reasons. The announcement doesn’t mention anything about the delay but states that the pilot started in May and ended in December in 2021. Jamaica completed its CBDC in the first quarter of 2022 and the bank also announced that it was working with an Ireland-based technology company eCurrency Mint on the project. The scope of the project was limited to the wallet providers who indicated readiness to take part in the timeframe.

The national commercial bank also came on board to test the services that can use the CBDC solution as per the announcement. The services tested included minting $1.5 million worth of crypto, using CBDCs to wallet providers like the BOJ’s banking department and the first CBDC issuance to a deposit institution was worth J$5 million made to NCB. The NCB onboarded 57 customers that conducted person-to-person transactions via 37 accounts. This included transactions with small merchants like local craft jewelers, footwear designers, and fashion boutiques as the BOJ announced. The rollout will see a continuation of onboarding current customers and new customers and will allow two additional wallet providers that are conducting testing, to distribute the CBDCs to their customers and the testing of the transactions between customers of other wallet providers.

As recently reported, The Bank of Jamaica, which is Jamaica’s central bank, partnered with the Irish tech company for its central bank digital currency project and this marks the latest country making efforts towards issuing its own digital currency. According to a press release by the Bank, eCurrency Mint is a cryptography security company that specializes in central bank digital currency issuance and it got selected as the technology provider for the sovereign digital currency project. Jamaica’s central bank invited many tech solution providers to submit applications for a CBDC project back in 2020 and at that time, the BoJ clarified that its planned sovereign digital currency won’t be based on crypto