Jamaica Payment System Closes 2025 With POS Network at 34,151 Terminals as Annual Cheque Volumes Drop 7.1%

• December RTGS settles JMD 2,430.73B in high-value interbank payments
• POS terminals reach 34,151, processing JMD 119.18B in December alone
• Annual cheque volume falls 7.1% to 5.10M as digital displacement accelerates
• CSD transaction volume rises 4.2% in 2025 despite 3.6% value decline
• Debit cards in circulation reach 3.9 million across Jamaican households
• Electronic transactions total JMD 595.61B in December’s festive peak

Jamaica’s payment infrastructure ended 2025 on a note of high activity and structural transformation — December’s data showing robust volumes across every electronic channel while the full-year picture confirmed an unmistakable migration away from paper payments and toward the digital economy that the Bank of Jamaica has spent years building toward.

The Bank of Jamaica’s Payment System Data Bulletin for December 2025 provides both the final month’s readings and full-year 2025 comparisons, offering an unusually complete snapshot of where Jamaica’s payments landscape has arrived at the end of another pivotal year. The December figures reflect the heightened economic activity of the Christmas season, while the annual comparisons reveal the deeper structural forces reshaping how Jamaicans transact, save, and invest.

RTGS Handles JMD 2.43 Trillion in December’s Settlement Surge

The JAMCLEAR-RTGS system processed JMD 2,430.73 billion in total value during December 2025, reflecting the concentration of high-value institutional transactions — payroll processing, government payments, interbank settlements, and corporate treasury operations — that characterise the month-end and year-end calendar. Merchant banks accounted for JMD 1,573.80 billion of the total, maintaining their dominant position in the RTGS ledger, while USD-denominated settlements reached USD 289.08 million as cross-border institutional flows rose in tandem with the holiday season’s foreign exchange activity.

The RTGS system’s role as Jamaica’s backbone for systemically important payments makes it the most consequential single infrastructure component in the island’s financial plumbing. Every large-value corporate transaction, every government disbursement, every interbank obligation clears through JAMCLEAR-RTGS in near real-time. The December 2025 volumes are consistent with the elevated seasonal pattern seen in prior years, when the concentration of end-of-year financial activity pushes both the number and size of RTGS transactions above monthly averages.

POS Network Hits 34,151 Terminals — Highest on Record

The number of point-of-sale terminals installed across Jamaica reached 34,151 at end-December 2025 — the highest figure in the current data series and a testament to the sustained expansion of card acceptance infrastructure across the island’s retail, hospitality, and service sectors. These terminals processed 8.65 million POS transactions in December valued at JMD 119.18 billion, making the final month of 2025 one of the busiest in the series for card-based retail payments. USD-denominated POS activity reached 200,710 transactions worth USD 57.95 million, reflecting Jamaica’s significant tourism and foreign-currency retail economy.

The POS terminal count of 34,151 represents years of deliberate effort by Jamaica’s commercial banks and the BOJ’s payment system development agenda to push card acceptance beyond the traditional urban and hotel-centric clusters. The current distribution, while still weighted toward Kingston, Montego Bay, and Ocho Rios, includes a growing tail of rural and semi-urban merchant locations that are being integrated into the formal card economy for the first time. For Jamaica’s retailers, the continued expansion of terminals has been accompanied by a sustained increase in average transaction values as consumers grow more comfortable using cards for larger purchases.

Annual Cheque Decline Accelerates: Volume Down 7.1% in 2025

Among the full-year 2025 comparisons, none tells a cleaner story of structural change than the cheque data. Annual cheque volumes fell from 5.49 million in 2024 to 5.10 million in 2025 — a decline of 7.1%, the steepest annual contraction recorded in recent years. The corresponding value fell from JMD 951.59 billion to JMD 897.45 billion, a 5.7% decline. In December alone, cheque volumes registered at just 0.44 million, with a value of JMD 78.53 billion — figures that would have been considered modest by the standards of just a few years ago.

The causes of cheque decline are structural and reinforcing. Businesses that once relied on cheques for supplier payments and payroll have migrated to ACH transfers and online banking. Individuals who wrote cheques for rent, utilities, and professional services have shifted to card payments and mobile transfers. The commercial banks have actively encouraged this migration through pricing structures that make electronic transactions cheaper and through interface improvements that reduce the friction of digital payment setup. At the current pace of decline, cheque volumes could fall below 4.5 million annually within two years — a milestone that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago when the cheque was still the dominant non-cash payment instrument for Jamaican businesses.

Manual cheque processing in foreign currencies also remains a visible indicator of Jamaica’s import-dependent economy: USD cheques totalled 4,830 transactions worth USD 61.21 million in December, with smaller volumes in Canadian dollars (CDN 0.04 million) and British pounds (GBP 0.20 million). These foreign-currency cheques, typically used for trade finance and service payments to overseas counterparties, have similarly been declining as wire transfer and international ACH options become more accessible to Jamaican businesses.

ABM Network: JMD 110.22 Billion Withdrawn in December

Cash demand remained substantial through Jamaica’s ABM network in December 2025, with 5.64 million JMD-denominated transactions totalling JMD 110.22 billion — a strong reading consistent with the elevated cash requirements of the Christmas season, when households increase spending on food, gifts, travel, and celebrations. USD withdrawals reached 64,430 transactions worth USD 18.59 million, reflecting tourist and business demand for foreign currency cash across the island’s ABM infrastructure.

The sustained high level of ABM cash withdrawals, even as electronic payment volumes grow, reflects a reality well-understood by Jamaica’s financial sector: the island’s economy remains substantially cash-dependent at the retail level, particularly for informal commerce, small-vendor transactions, and household spending in communities where card acceptance is limited. The ABM network serves as the critical bridge between the electronic banking system and the cash economy, and its performance through December’s peak season represents the physical backbone of Jamaica’s festive economic activity.

CSD: Volume Up 4.2%, Value Down 3.6% — A Year of More, Smaller Transactions

The JAMCLEAR-CSD securities depository processed 55,784 transactions in full-year 2025, up 4.2% from 53,548 in 2024. Yet the total value of those transactions fell from JMD 6,759.59 billion to JMD 6,518.50 billion, a 3.6% contraction. This divergence — more transactions, less aggregate value — suggests that Jamaica’s government securities market in 2025 was characterised by higher frequency but lower average deal size: more participants transacting more often in smaller individual lots, rather than fewer participants executing larger block trades.

In December 2025 specifically, the CSD handled 10,155 transactions with a total JMD value of JMD 1,238 billion and USD 410.73 million. Repos and reverse repos — the BOJ’s primary open market operations for managing banking system liquidity — each ran at approximately JMD 187 billion, reflecting the central bank’s continued active stance in fine-tuning short-term liquidity conditions through the end of the year. The repo book outstanding at quarter-end showed JMD 281.61 billion in JMD instruments and USD 326.47 million in USD instruments, with Government of Jamaica bonds totalling JMD 831.14 billion distributed across banks, primary dealers, and secondary dealers.

Cards in Circulation: 3.9 Million Debit Cards and Counting

Jamaica’s card ecosystem closed 2025 with 3,903,691 JMD debit cards in circulation — a figure that approaches 1.5 cards per household in a country of approximately 2.7 million people and underscores how thoroughly debit card ownership has penetrated Jamaican society. Credit card issuance stood at 435,883 JMD-denominated cards alongside 24,830 USD credit cards and 39,092 dual-currency cards — the latter catering to a segment of the population that regularly transacts in both Jamaican and US dollars.

The December 2025 electronic transaction data reflects this broad card base in action. Debit card transactions in JMD reached 14,208.47 thousand for the month at a value of JMD 165.52 billion, while credit card transactions added 3,377.81 thousand valued at JMD 136.53 billion. Combined with other electronic transactions of JMD 293.56 billion, total JMD electronic activity in December reached JMD 595.61 billion — a substantial flow through Jamaica’s digital payment channels in a single month. USD electronic transactions added another USD 281.05 million, with debit cards contributing USD 124.48 million and credit cards USD 111.92 million.

Implications for Jamaica’s Financial Sector and Economy

The December 2025 payment system data lands at a moment when Jamaica’s digital financial infrastructure is visibly maturing. The combination of a 34,151-terminal POS network, nearly 3.9 million debit cards in active circulation, and accelerating cheque abandonment paints a picture of an economy that is structurally re-organising its payment habits. For Jamaica’s commercial banks, this transition is net positive in the medium term: electronic transactions are cheaper to process, generate more data for credit decision-making, and support deeper customer relationships than cash or cheque-based banking ever could.

For the broader economy, the expansion of card and electronic payment infrastructure has direct implications for investment, business efficiency, and financial inclusion. Merchants who accept cards reach more customers and face lower cash-handling costs. Workers paid electronically are more easily integrated into the formal financial system. Consumers with debit cards can access e-commerce, digital services, and remittance receipt that are inaccessible to the unbanked. The December 2025 data suggests that Jamaica has made meaningful progress along all of these dimensions in 2025 — and that the pace of change is, if anything, accelerating as the year’s final chapter is written.

Looking into 2026, the key metric to watch is whether POS terminal growth continues to push card acceptance deeper into rural Jamaica, where merchant resistance and infrastructure limitations have historically slowed adoption. If the terminal count extends meaningfully beyond 35,000 — and if the cheque decline continues at its current 7% annual pace — Jamaica’s payment landscape in 2026 will look substantially more digital than the one that opened 2025. The December 2025 bulletin, with its full-year perspective, provides the clearest evidence yet that the transition is well underway.

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