Jamaica’s Payment System Logs 4.2 Million RTGS Transactions Through October as Cheque Decline Steepens and ABM Cash Demand Surges

• JAMCLEAR-RTGS records 4.2 million transactions worth JMD 22.4 trillion year-to-date
• Cheque volumes plunge 22.4% year-to-date as Jamaica’s digital migration accelerates
• POS terminal count rises 9.7% but transaction volumes fall 11.3% year-to-date
• JMD ABM transaction values surge 21.6% year-to-date as cash demand strengthens
• USD ABM withdrawals fall 27.3% in value; dual currency cards down 5.7%
• Hurricane Melissa adds weather disruption to October payment infrastructure pressures

Jamaica’s payment infrastructure processed 4.2 million high-value interbank transactions through October 2025 while the broader retail payments landscape continued a structural shift away from paper-based instruments — but the picture was complicated by a sharp divergence between declining point-of-sale activity and surging automated banking machine cash demand, a split that raises questions about the true pace and depth of Jamaica’s digital payment transition.

The Bank of Jamaica’s October 2025 Payment System Data Bulletin provides a cumulative picture of Jamaica’s electronic and retail payment flows for the first ten months of the year. Through October, the JAMCLEAR-RTGS system — the Bank of Jamaica’s real-time gross settlement infrastructure for large-value interbank payments — handled 4,218,507 transactions with a total JMD value of JMD 22,375.14 billion and a USD value of US$2,585.12 million. Merchant banks continued to dominate the system, accounting for 93.98 percent of all transaction volumes and 66.54 percent of JMD values, reflecting their central position in Jamaica’s wholesale financial infrastructure.

Cheques in Freefall: A 22% Decline Signals Structural Change

The most unambiguous trend in the October bulletin is the accelerating decline of cheque-based payments. Through October 2025, JMD cheque volumes processed through the clearing system totalled 4.26 million, down 22.4 percent from the 5.49 million processed in the same period of 2024. In value terms, JMD cheques fell 21.0 percent to JMD 751.94 billion, compared with JMD 951.59 billion a year earlier. USD cheques tell a similar story: volumes declined 22.5 percent and value fell 21.9 percent year-on-year.

A decline of more than 20 percent in both volume and value of cheque processing — sustained across all currency denominations — is not a blip. It is a structural transition. Businesses that once relied on cheques for supplier payments and payroll disbursements are migrating to electronic fund transfers and direct bank credits. Consumers who once wrote personal cheques for significant transactions are shifting to online banking platforms. The regulatory environment, including the Bank of Jamaica’s ongoing efforts to modernise the National Payments System, has actively encouraged this migration, and the data through October 2025 confirms it is proceeding at a rapid pace.

The implications for Jamaica’s banking infrastructure are significant. Cheque processing is an operationally intensive and relatively high-cost activity for the clearing banks. Its decline frees up back-office capacity and reduces operational risk, but it also requires investment in the alternative digital rails that absorb the migrating transaction volumes. The pace of cheque decline — at over 20 percent year-on-year — suggests Jamaica is in the mature phase of this transition rather than the early stages.

The POS Paradox: More Terminals, Fewer Transactions

One of the more analytically interesting findings in the October bulletin is the divergence between POS terminal expansion and POS transaction volumes. Jamaica’s installed POS terminal base grew to 34,583 units through October 2025, a 9.7 percent increase from the 31,527 terminals recorded in October 2024. More terminals in more locations should, in theory, generate more transactions. Instead, the opposite is occurring.

JMD POS transactions through October 2025 totalled 75.22 million in volume, down 11.3 percent from 84.75 million in 2024, with a JMD value of JMD 1,016.30 billion compared with JMD 1,136.40 billion the prior year — a 10.6 percent value decline. USD POS transactions fell 11.2 percent in volume and 8.7 percent in value. The divergence between terminal growth and transaction decline is a pattern that raises important questions about utilisation rates, merchant behaviour, and consumer preferences.

Several explanations are plausible. Merchants who installed POS terminals during the post-pandemic period of rapid terminal rollout may be experiencing lower card acceptance rates as consumer card preferences shift toward mobile payment platforms that route transactions differently. Alternatively, some of the terminal growth may reflect installations in lower-traffic locations — rural markets, small retail outlets — where transaction density is inherently lower. A third possibility is that a portion of consumer spending that previously passed through POS terminals is now being conducted via instant bank transfers or mobile money platforms that are recorded separately from the traditional POS network.

ABM Cash Demand Surges Amid Digital Shift

In apparent contradiction to the narrative of Jamaica’s digital transition, JMD ABM transactions have surged strongly through October 2025. JMD ABM transaction volumes reached 55.87 million year-to-date, up 14.2 percent from 48.94 million in 2024. More strikingly, the JMD value of ABM transactions reached JMD 1,008.18 billion — a 21.6 percent increase from JMD 829.09 billion the prior year. Jamaica’s ABMs are not just being used more frequently; they are being used for larger withdrawals.

The surge in JMD ABM demand while POS usage declines suggests that Jamaica’s payment transition is more nuanced than a simple cash-to-digital story. Many Jamaican consumers are drawing larger cash amounts from ABMs and then using that cash in the economy — at markets, in informal service transactions, in the real estate sector, and in smaller retail environments where card acceptance remains inconsistent. The decline in POS transactions alongside a rise in ABM withdrawals is consistent with a pattern in which formal digital payment rails are growing more slowly than headline terminal numbers suggest, while cash remains the preferred medium for a large proportion of daily transactions.

This context makes the Bank of Jamaica’s monthly ABM performance reporting particularly important. If cash demand is rising, the reliability, availability, and geographic distribution of Jamaica’s ABM network are critical infrastructure questions — not merely operational statistics.

USD Channels Signal Structural Shifts in Foreign Currency Behaviour

The USD-denominated payment channels tell a different and somewhat more concerning story. USD ABM cash withdrawals fell 20.8 percent in volume and 27.3 percent in value through October 2025, reaching US$248.01 million compared with US$341.03 million in 2024. This sharp contraction in USD cash withdrawals reflects both the decline in the outstanding stock of USD dual-currency debit cards and potentially a change in how Jamaican consumers are accessing foreign currency.

The dual-currency card story, which has been a recurring feature of the 2025 bulletin series, continued in October. The number of USD dual-currency cards in circulation fell to 38,961, down 5.7 percent from 41,310 in October 2024. The decline has been gradual but consistent throughout the year — a structural product rationalisation that has reduced the pool of cardholders who can access USD through the ABM network. USD credit cards in circulation fell 1.0 percent to 24,937. The dual-currency card decline began sharply in the June 2025 period when holdings dropped from a mid-May 2025 high, and the subsequent partial recovery stabilised at around 38,800–39,000 — suggesting a permanent reduction in the product’s market footprint rather than a temporary disruption.

The JAMCLEAR-CSD and Bond Market Activity

Jamaica’s Central Securities Depository — JAMCLEAR-CSD — processed 96,696 transactions through October 2025 with a total JMD value of JMD 11,703.76 billion and a USD value of US$2,407.32 million. Entitlements and proceeds were the largest transaction category by volume at 39.46 percent, while Repos and Reverse Repos together accounted for 24.96 percent of transaction volumes — reflecting the continued importance of the repurchase agreement market as a tool for institutional liquidity management. The Bank of Jamaica’s use of open market operations through repos to manage systemic liquidity underpins much of the CSD’s transaction flow, making the CSD data a useful proxy for the intensity of monetary policy implementation activity in any given period.

Hurricane Melissa and the October Context

October 2025 brought an additional challenge to Jamaica’s payment infrastructure in the form of Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall and caused selective disruption to banking and ATM operations across the island. The storm prompted precautionary decommissioning of machines in high-risk locations and caused sporadic power and telecommunications outages that affected both ABM availability and electronic payment processing. The hurricane’s effects will have had some depressing impact on transaction volumes in October — consumers unable to access functioning machines or reliable connectivity cannot conduct electronic transactions — though the precise quantum of impact on the YTD cumulative figures is modest given that it affects only a portion of one month within a ten-month aggregation.

The hurricane context is nonetheless relevant for interpreting some of the October-specific readings in the data. The combination of storm disruption, ongoing structural shifts in payment channel preferences, and the sustained decline in USD-denominated activity created a complex operating environment for Jamaica’s payment infrastructure in the final quarter of 2025.

Implications for Jamaica’s Financial Sector and Economy

The October data reinforces a picture of Jamaica’s payment system in active transition — away from paper, toward electronic, but with a significant and growing role for cash that complicates the simple digital-first narrative. For banks and payment service providers, the POS utilisation paradox suggests that terminal deployment alone is insufficient to drive card transaction growth; consumer education, merchant incentives, and the quality of the payment experience at the point of sale all matter.

For Jamaica’s real estate sector, the cash demand data is directly relevant. Property transactions at all price points involve cash at some stage, whether in the form of deposits, agent fees, title transfer costs, or vendor payments in the informal land market that underpins significant portions of rural and peri-urban Jamaica. The sustained growth in JMD ABM transaction values suggests that cash remains deeply embedded in the transaction mechanics of Jamaica’s property market, and that improvements in ABM infrastructure — reliability, geographic reach, capacity — have real economic value beyond their obvious consumer banking function.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com