FX.co ★ Jamaica plans to launch a digital currency

The Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, posted a tweet that the country is moving to launch its electronic currency. The launch is scheduled for this year.

"The Bank of Jamaica will issue our digital Jamaican dollar in 2022 after a successful pilot project in 2021," the Prime Minister wrote, repeating a speech delivered by the Governor-General of the island.

Jamaica plans to launch a digital currency

"This will serve as the basis for the digital payments architecture of Jamaica and will contribute to expanding access to financial services, increasing the speed of transactions while reducing the cost of banking services for Jamaicans," Holness believes.

In January, Holness shared the news that the introduction of the central bank's digital currency, or CBDC, will occur in the first quarter of 2022, but the exact date has not yet been set.

In this rush of digitalization, Jamaica joins the Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in creating digital fiat money. Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, CBDCs are government-backed digital versions of the local currency.

Of course, electronic fiat currencies lack many advantages of tokens, but their format can still speed up calculations, thereby bringing an additional bonus to the country's economy.

There remains the issue of cyber-reliability of stored funds, and here, it seems, the Central Banks of individual countries are only at the beginning of their journey.