Sagicor Group Jamaica Limited (SJ) is the latest financial player to indicate its intention to roll out a digital wallet to handle Jamaica’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), Jam-Dex.

This was confirmed by Sagicor Group President and Chief Executive Officer Christopher Zacca last Friday at the 10th annual general meeting (AGM) held at Jamaica Pegasus Hotel; Sagicor Bank Jamaica Limited is its wholly owned commercial banking subsidiary which would be involved in the CBDC project.

“That’s definitely part of our priority and a digital wallet is in production. It is being developed in our agile labs, as well as the adoption of CBDC, so a lot more [is] to come by the end of this year,” said Zacca.

SJ’s 2022 annual report mentioned that the acquisition of Alliance Financial Services Limited (AFSL) would fit into that remit of the group’s plans to develop products around prepaid cards and digital wallets. Jam-Dex is one-to-one with the Jamaican Dollar.

TFOB (2021) Limited, which operates the Lynk mobile application, was the first entity to be approved by the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) to distribute Jam-Dex. The NCB Financial Group subsidiary has been the primary avenue for CBDC to be released to the public. Last year the first 100,000 users to apply for Jam-Dex on Lynk received $2,500 Jam-Dex in their individual digital wallets, with additional incentives launched this year for Jam-Dex usage.