What if your taxi man, your barber and even your regular higgla could all take card payments? Mastercard wants to make that a reality by bringing fifty thousand Jamaican small businesses into the digital economy by 2030.
It’s an ambitious goal. While about 73% of Jamaicans already have bank accounts, only about 8% of small merchants currently have the technology to accept digital payments.
If you’ve ever tapped your card at a supermarket, booked a hotel online or paid with a debit or credit card, chances are Mastercard helped process that transaction behind the scenes.
The global payments company has been steadily expanding its footprint in Jamaica for years. Now, it has set its sights on a major challenge: bringing tens of thousands of micro, small and medium-sized businesses into the digital payments ecosystem.
According to Mastercard, Jamaica is well positioned for a digital payments boom. World Bank data shows the country is already one of the more financially included markets in the Caribbean, with nearly three-quarters of Jamaicans holding bank accounts.
But despite that progress, cash still dominates many everyday transactions.
And that’s because many small businesses still aren’t equipped to accept digital payments.
The data showed that consumers, even though they do prefer to pay digitally, they’re forced, and that’s an important point. They’re forced because a lot of the places that they do everyday spend, that’s where the merchant acceptance gap is. So whether it’s your taxis, for example that you take to go to work, or that small mom and pop shop in the district, or that bar, or that vendor on the road, for example. Those folks, that’s where the infrastructure gap exists. So by plugging that gap, what we’re going to be doing is digitize a lot more of the transactions in those cash intensive areas.
Dalton Fowles – Mastercard Country Manager, Jamaica
Mastercard estimates that cash still accounts for roughly 72 per cent of personal spending in Jamaica, particularly in areas like transportation, small retail and informal commerce.
According to Fowles, the issue isn’t consumer demand.
What we show is that over 55% of the consumer base are very comfortable doing a transaction with a card associated with their savings account. But where they want to pay, where they do the everyday stuff, those merchants, that’s where the gaps are.
Dalton Fowles – Mastercard Country Manager, Jamaica
Now, 2030 is just four years away, and onboarding 50,000 businesses is no small task.
But Mastercard believes the demand is already there. The challenge is making digital payments available in more of the places where Jamaicans spend their money every day.
The company has already signed an agreement with JUTC to introduce contactless payments on buses.
And it has expanded a merchant onboarding initiative with NCB, Digicel and the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce to bring more businesses into the digital economy.
Mastercard is betting on technologies like Tap on Phone, which allows merchants to accept card payments directly on a smartphone, along with contactless payments and Click to Pay, to make transactions faster, easier and more accessible.
So while Jamaica is already one of the region’s most financially included countries, Mastercard believes the next phase of growth won’t come from getting more people into the financial system.
It will come from helping thousands more businesses finally start accepting digital payments.
And that’s the bottom line.
So what do you think? If your taxi driver, market vendor or favourite small business started accepting card payments tomorrow, would you use it, or do you still prefer cash?
