Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Richard Byles is calling on commercial banks and cash intensive businesses to prepare to pull more people into using the digital currency, but efforts by several entities to do the same over the last few years show this may not be an easy task.

Byles, who spoke at last week’s Anti-Money Laundering/Counter Financing of Terrorism virtual conference, said he wanted businesses which handle a lot of cash to set up digital wallets for payment to individuals, including pensioners; toll road payments; and remittances.

The governor’s statement is pre-marketing for the BOJ, which aims to engender widespread use of its central bank digital currency, the Jamaican CBDC. He called on deposit takers to encourage their merchants to set up CBDC wallets.

However, the central bank itself has overseen more than a decade of failed attempts to get Jamaicans – individuals and merchants – to adopt mobile money/digital wallets as an alternative to cash.

Prior to this, the National Commercial Bank, GraceKennedy, and the Jamaica Cooperative Credit Union all attempted to launch digital wallets as an alternative to cash. However, take-up has been below the tide mark for all investors.

The most recent product launch occurred with the partnership between the Amber Group Limited and National Commercial Bank Jamaica (NCBJ) Limited, which introduced a new mobile wallet Amber Pay in 2020. The jury is still out on this new effort.

It will be NCBJ’s second mobile payment system; the other being Quisk, which has been on the market for two years and is offered in partnership with another tech company, Advanced Integrated Systems, AIS.

NCB Quisk, launched live in 2016, allows users to send and receive money, pay for goods and services, make bill payments and buy phone credit.

In 2017, GraceKennedy also launched GK MPay, a mobile wallet by GK courtesy of Oberthur Technologies. The services offer peer-to-peer transfer, mobile phone top-ups and cash-in/cash-out. The app does not require a smartphone as clients with “bangers” can dial *170# to activate.

Grandfather

The grandfather of them all, the very first digital wallet introduced in Jamaica was Jamaica Credit Unions E-payment Services (JCUES), later rebranded Conec. It was developed by technology provider Mozido in 2014 for the Jamaica Cooperative Credit Union League (JCCUL).

The mobile wallet was aimed at extending financial services to Jamaica’s underbanked population. The JCCUL, which represented, at the time, 42 credit unions serving over a third of the nation’s consumers, launched the stored-value account mobile wallet targeting an estimated two million underbanked citizens.

Below par

Take-up for all mobile wallet products have remained below par.

Heston Hutton, pioneer of the first digital wallet with the JCCUL at the time of launch in 2014, says the cause lies with adoption, as still only just about 40 per cent of the population has an active banking relationship.

Similarly, with only 20 to 25 per cent of the population having a debit or credit card, any ambition to transform Jamaica to a digital economy, he said, is far-fetched.

Hutton, however, maintains that adoption to a mobile wallet or any digital payment platform must be State-motivated if the country is to have more people onboarded and for it to be a worthwhile alternative solution.

He recommends that the Government starts with converting State-run social programmes like pension and Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) payments to a digital wallet in order to grow the ecosystem.

He said that, when this is done, “within minutes, customers could receive their digital cash to ease their current burdens without having to leave their homes. There would be no lines at remittance agencies, post offices, and financial institutions as deposits could be placed directly to an individual’s mobile wallet giving them access to funds and markets 24/7”.