THE Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is facing a barage of criticisms on Twitter about the decision to name the central bank digital currency (CBDC), JAM-DEX.

The BOJ revealed the name just over a week ago, citing that JAM-DEX is the shortened version for the Jamaican Digital Exchange with the slogan “No cash, no problem!”. The name and tagline were selected following a design competition.

The central bank said full roll-out of the digital currency is set for this year.

However. Twitter users, while admitting that the project is promising, argued that the CBDC’s name JAM-DEX could be easily misconstrued as a decentralised exchange (DEX), and its logo is “terrible”, according to the community’s response. The name JAM-DEX has left the Twitter community unsatisfied with the result from the design competition.

In the cryptocurrency world, a “DEX” refers to a decentralised exchange, where there is no centralised authority, but rather a network of peer-to-peer nodes, which allow users to trade directly with one another without any intermediaries involved. In this model, the control of your funds lies in your hands, and you trade directly with another person.

The local crypto community was eager to see the rejected designs expressing their disgust with the end result. Another user argued that judges had “outdated” standards, while others were simply concerned that the project would not be taken seriously due to its logo.

One Twitter user remarked, “the logo is terrible at this point no one will take you serious like seriously you want to go in the most advanced state of money but your logo was created by a 5 year-old mind smh that’s what you are projecting why would people who understand this space would invest here.”

Another user tweeted, “we actually have a problem where the judges have out-dated standards, which discourage local designers, who apply more international standards to their designs.”

Jamaica revealed its plans to launch a CBDC in 2020, making it one of the Caribbean countries to do so.

Nigeria was one of the first countries in the world to launch a CBDC. The United States is currently evaluating the prospects of a digital dollar while El Salvador, on the other hand, has taken a different approach.

The Central American nation has embraced Bitcoin (BTC) fully instead of developing its own digital currency and has even made it legal tender.

BOJ deputy governor with responsibility for banking, currency operations, and financial markets, Natalie Haynes, has declared that the central bank is pressing forward with its CBDC and is now moving to increase the number of deposit-taking institutions (DTIs) onboarding clients and ramping up the communication campaign to this end.

In addition, the BOJ completing its independent third-party quality assurance assessment of the system, the results of which will be made public. Addressing Monday’s BOJ quarterly media briefing, Haynes advised that National Commercial Bank (NCB) remains the sole CBDC wallet provider and has already on-boarded approximately 300 small merchants, inclusive of barbers, hairdressers, vendors, and cook shop operators.

She explained that NCB is focused on getting more individual and small merchant clients on board during the quarter, The BOJ deputy governor disclosed that the central bank is now testing the system with another DTI that acquired the hardware from Republic of Ireland-based technology provider, eCurrency Mint Incorporated, which was selected to support CBDC project implementation.

“So, hopefully, by the end of this quarter, that DTI will be ready to onboard customers. [But] we need more DTIs to come in so that CBDC can be more widely available to customers,” Haynes told the briefing.