- 901 ABMs nationwide in January 2025, with 876 in operation at 97.2%
- System-wide uptime improved to 92.7%, up from December’s 90.7%
- Rural uptime of 92.9% surpassed the KMA at 91.5% for the month
- Hanover parish recorded 85.7% operational and 68.6% uptime, both non-compliant
- Average national recovery time rose to 3.4 hours from December’s 2.6
- Technology outages at Scotia Bank Jamaica were the primary driver of downtime
Jamaica’s ABM network opened 2025 with a post-Christmas recovery, posting improved system-wide uptime of 92.7% in January — and in a notable reversal of the usual pattern, rural machines across the island outperformed their Kingston Metropolitan Area counterparts on the uptime metric that matters most to consumers and regulators alike.
The ABM Performance Report for January 2025, published by the Bank of Jamaica, documents the operational performance of Jamaica’s 901 automated banking machines across the first month of the new year. With the Christmas peak behind it, the network returned to more comfortable operating conditions — but the January data introduces its own story: a parish-level compliance failure in Hanover that illustrates how aggregate national averages can conceal serious localised deficiencies.
January Recovery After December Strain
The contrast with December 2024 is instructive. In December, the Christmas surge pushed system-wide uptime down to 90.7% — barely above the Bank of Jamaica’s minimum compliance threshold — as cash dispense and deposit jams multiplied across the network. January, by comparison, is a quieter month for ABM usage. Schools are returning and consumer spending is contracting from its festive peak; the pressure on machines eases, and uptime naturally recovers.
The January 2025 figure of 92.7% system uptime confirms this seasonal pattern. Of 901 ABMs on the island, 876 were classified as operational during the month, an operational rate of 97.2%. These headline figures suggest a network performing comfortably within its design parameters, with more than adequate availability for the reduced demand of a post-holiday January.
However, the average national recovery time — the interval between a machine going offline and returning to service — rose to 3.4 hours in January, up from 2.6 hours in December. This increase is counterintuitive: one might expect that calmer January conditions would enable faster recovery. The data from Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica suggests a likely explanation: December’s failures were largely mechanical jam-clearance issues that field technicians can resolve on-site quickly, whereas January’s failures were disproportionately technology-related outages that required longer diagnostic and resolution times.
The Rural-Urban Reversal
Perhaps the most analytically interesting feature of the January 2025 data is the reversal of the typical geographic performance hierarchy. Ordinarily, Kingston Metropolitan Area machines post the highest uptime, followed by Other Urban, with Rural trailing. In January 2025, that ordering inverted for uptime: rural ABMs recorded 92.9% uptime, marginally ahead of Other Urban at 91.9% and notably ahead of the KMA at 91.5%.
The KMA figure of 91.5% — while still above the compliance minimum — is lower than might be expected from Jamaica’s most densely served banking market. It likely reflects the fact that technology-related outages at Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica’s urban estate, which is concentrated in the KMA, had an outsized impact on Kingston and St Andrew performance. Rural uptime, meanwhile, may have benefited from January’s lower transaction volumes relative to December, which reduced the mechanical stress on cash-handling components.
Rural operational availability was slightly lower than the KMA at 97.3% compared to 97.2% for KMA and Other Urban, but these differences are negligible. The operational availability metric captures whether machines are switched on and theoretically available; uptime captures whether they are actually serving customers without interruption. The January data thus presents a nuanced picture: rural machines were slightly less reliably switched on but, when they were operational, they stayed up for a higher percentage of the time.
Hanover: A Parish-Level Compliance Failure
The January 2025 report highlights a serious compliance failure at the parish level. In Hanover, the ABMs operated by JMMBBank recorded an operational availability of just 85.7% and an uptime of only 68.6% — both figures flagged in red in the BOJ’s published report as falling below the minimum compliance thresholds of 90% for operational availability and 95% for uptime.
A 68.6% uptime figure means that for nearly a third of the scheduled operating period, Hanover’s JMMBBank ABMs were unavailable to customers. Hanover is one of Jamaica’s smaller and more rural western parishes, with limited banking infrastructure relative to its population. For residents who depend on ABMs as their primary means of accessing cash — for daily expenses, bill payments and economic participation — an ABM that is unreachable for 31.4% of the month is a serious service failure.
The BOJ’s practice of publishing institution-level and parish-level compliance data is designed precisely for cases like this. The visibility of the Hanover failure in the public report creates accountability pressure on JMMBBank to investigate and remedy the root cause — whether that is a specific machine with a persistent fault, a lack of adequate preventive maintenance protocols, or a shortage of spare parts in the parish. The BOJ does not publish the details of any remediation action it takes, but the regulatory expectation is clear: institutions that repeatedly breach compliance thresholds face supervisory consequences.
Technology vs. Mechanical Failures: Different Responses Required
The January 2025 data, read together with December 2024, illustrates that Jamaica’s ABM network faces two distinct failure modes that require different management responses. Mechanical failures — cash jams, dispense errors, deposit processing faults — are primarily driven by transaction volume and are managed through cash replenishment scheduling, preventive maintenance and fast on-site response. Technology failures — network outages, software faults, connectivity issues — require a different set of capabilities: robust IT infrastructure, rapid remote diagnosis and the ability to push software fixes without physical site visits.
Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica’s attribution of January outages to unplanned technology-related issues, as noted in the BOJ report, suggests that at least one major operator is navigating technology infrastructure challenges that are not resolved simply by the end of the Christmas peak. Banks investing in ABM network modernisation — including remote monitoring systems that detect faults before customers experience them, and next-generation machines with improved cash-handling mechanisms — are likely to see structural improvements in both uptime metrics and recovery times.
Cash Access, Mortgages and the January Economy
January is an economically important month for Jamaican households. School fees, utility bills deferred from December and the costs of re-stocking after the Christmas period all fall in the same four-week window. For families that received remittances or bonuses in December, January is the month when those inflows are converted into cash expenditures. For families on tight budgets, it is also the month when access to ABMs is most operationally critical in terms of managing cash flow to the end of the school term.
The property and housing market context in January 2025 is similarly noteworthy. The beginning of the year typically sees a pickup in mortgage applications as families reassess their housing situations after the Christmas period. Prospective buyers who received salary increases effective January 1, or who received end-of-year bonuses in December, often move their home purchase plans forward in January. The smooth functioning of the banking system — including ABM access for the cash transactions that accompany property searches, solicitor meetings and deposit payments — is part of the enabling infrastructure for this housing market activity.
Building a Baseline for 2025
The January 2025 ABM performance data establishes the first monthly benchmark for a network that has grown to 901 machines — one more than the 900 recorded in December 2024. That modest expansion reflects the ongoing, if gradual, extension of ABM infrastructure to serve communities that currently have limited access. The BOJ’s monthly reporting will track whether this expansion continues through 2025 and whether the new machines are deployed in the rural and peri-urban communities where access gaps are most acute.
For regulators, the January data sets a 92.7% uptime baseline against which subsequent months will be compared. For Jamaican consumers — particularly in parishes like Hanover where performance fell well short of the national average — the expectation is that the visibility of compliance failures in the BOJ’s public reporting translates into tangible improvements in the reliability of their local cash access infrastructure. Whether that accountability mechanism is working effectively will become clearer as the monthly data accumulates through the year.
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