The JTDA recently invited my business partner and EzeePayments.com CEO Narda Ventura and me to discuss digital payments on their Tech Talk Tuesday series, highlighting technology-related issues and ideas pertinent to the Jamaican ICT sector and broader society.

If you’re interested in the local and regional tech scene and are not already a member of the JTDA and listening in to Tech Talk Tuesdays, do consider signing up and checking out the sessions, which always feature valuable insights from a wide range of thought leaders and subject matter experts.

One of the questions asked by the moderator, Andrian Dunkley, current JTDA president and founder and CEO of StarApple Analytics, was about current trends for digital payments. So we thought it would be helpful to share a few of the ones we at EzeePayments.com have seen while assessing the digital payments industry landscape.

Let’s quickly summarise a few of these:

Less monopoly — or duopoly, as the case may be: For a long time, the credit card industry dominated the digital payments space, with Visa and Mastercard having the largest market share. In recent years, however, digital payments have expanded beyond credit cards to include digital and mobile wallets and new bases of exchange, like cryptocurrency. Most importantly, businesses and consumers no longer need to wait on big banks or other financial institutions to bring digital payment products and solutions to market for transactions with their customers and peers.

Greater adoption: Forbes recently reported that during the pandemic, e-commerce in the US jumped 55 per cent, Stripe’s revenues went up 70 per cent, and Paypal’s profits tripled. Internationally, analysts predict that transactions processed by digital payment facilitators will double in value between 2022 and 2025. Locally, NCB, one of the major e-commerce providers, also reported a significant jump in transaction value processed during the pandemic. Due to low credit card penetration, the Caribbean has always lagged in digital transactions. Still, with more recent introductions of Visa and Mastercard prepaid and debit, combined with changing consumer behaviour due to better local delivery options, that trend is changing.

More options: In addition to long-time international giant Paypal, other players like CashApp, Venmo and Zelle have also begun to grab market share in North America. In Asia, WeChat, AliPay, PayTM and GoJek dominate. Let’s not forget Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, with Facebook/Meta/WhatsApp also building their payments products. This list could continue, especially when we started adding up-and-coming payments platforms built in the Caribbean. Still, the point is that today’s consumer now has a broader array of digital payment options than ever before from which to choose.

Greater awareness: Thanks mainly to the pandemic and the drastically reduced ability for everyone to do cash face-to-face transactions during lockdowns, more Jamaican and Caribbean businesses and consumers, in particular, have become a lot more aware during the pandemic what the digital payment options available to them were.

More alternatives: As alternative digital payment methods, store cards and gift cards have been around for a while. Still, more recently, we’ve seen the emergence of buy now pay later (BNPL) as a payment option that offers a kind of structured credit-based payment, cryptocurrency, and stable coins (I will leave an in-depth discussion on these to the experts). Central bank digital currency (CBDC) was recently issued as an official digital alternative to the central bank’s country’s fiat currency.

Stayed tuned for Part 2 next week.

Kyle Lewis, co-founder & CTO EzeePayments.com is a member of the Jamaica Technology and Digital Alliance. Send your feedback to marketing@jtda.org.