After having its launch in December 2021 and getting a $2.05-billion capital injection by NCBFG, TFOB (2021) Limited has become the eighth company to be approved by the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) to operate a remittance service as a primary agent. TFOB will offer the remittance option via its mobile wallet dubbed Lynk.

TFOB Chief Executive Officer Vernon James told the Jamaica Observer in September that users would be able to fund their wallets via transfers from overseas. He confirmed that the remittance product would be launched in a month during the Christmas season which tends to see heavy volumes of inflows into the country.

Remittance inflows from April to September were down 2.2 per cent to US$1.76 billion with year to date inflows down 1.93 per cent to US$2.55 billion. The number of active physical locations was 493 at the end of September with 19 locations voluntarily closed and 15 new locations licensed.

Some of the new offerings in the coming months will include virtual cards, a QR code payment option for a merchant platform currently being tested and payment for government workers through Lynk, which is currently undergoing a pilot. Lynk already offers local money transfers, bill payments and mobile top-up. Lynk has garnered more than 170,000 unique users and more than 4,700 merchants to date. It’s the only approved wallet provider by the BOJ to handle Jamaica’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) Jam-Dex.

“We launched our ABM feature a couple months ago and that has gone very well with people able to cash in and cash out at the NCB ABM’s now. The next couple of weeks and months is the real exciting part of our feature release. We’re launching simplified onboard shortly. You’ll be able to onboard with really just a TRN (Tax Registration Number) and do very basic transactions. So, that will make it easier for customers to onboard and get into Lynk. We have a lot of things in store for 2023,” James closed.