Jamaica Hails CBDC Pilot a “Success”

The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) recently completed a successful pilot for their central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The BOJ minted its first $230 million worth of digital currency on 9 August 2021. This was issued to deposit taking institutions and authorized payment service providers.

Jamaica’s National Commercial Bank (NCB) took part in the CBDC pilot and was issued $5 million worth of the currency to test with a handful of small merchants and retail customers.

NCB’s customers then conducted person-to-person, cash-in and cash-out transactions, and completed transactions with small merchants at an NCB-sponsored event, “Market on the Lawn”, which took place in December 2021.

eCurrency Mint

BOJ carried out the pilot with the assistance of eCurrency Mint Inc., which styles itself as providing “expertise in CBDC policy considerations, design, and technology implementation”.

eCurrency Mint operates a technology known as DSC3, which uses symmetric key cryptography along with layers of digital security. The company claims that DSC3 is “highly scalable, capable of supporting high volume retail CBDC usage in even the largest economies… [and] requires minimal energy for creation, distribution and processing of transactions”. It also asserts that DSC3 is fully interoperable with existing systems.

See Also

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Read more about this technology here.

The BOJ plans to implement a national roll-out of the CBDC during the first quarter of 2022.