One solution to reducing JA’s crime rate

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Are you ready to go cashless?

JAMAICA'S potential to become a cashless society is determined by an ecosystem requiring all efforts from the Government, businesses and consumers, according to one technology expert.

Dushyant Savadia, CEO of the Amber Group — a technology conglomerate and creator of digital payment system Amber Pay — says Jamaica is heading in the right direction, but adds that it will require interest, desire and discipline from all three stakeholders to work.

"It's a wholistic effort that we all need to make together. We can't point fingers at government or businesses or consumers, it's an ecosystem of all the three that will make us cashless and the sooner we are, the lesser the crime, the more the profits, the more the stability for growth. And the world will look at us and say, 'Yea, we want to do business in Jamaica'," said Savadia in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/?fromt=yes

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Cash vs cashless

GOING cashless could reduce crime, provide greater financial inclusion, and help economic activity to be better measured, according to an economist lecturer.

"There's money in the economy that we don't necessarily know, so when we measure gross domestic product and we add up the consumption, and the investment, and the government spending, and the net exports that we the economists love to add together, we don't capture the informal activity," said Jovan Henry, an economics lecturer at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, while discussing the benefits of Jamaica becoming a cashless society.

He explained that the measure of GDP is incomplete, so adding the informal activity through formalisation will result in the actual representation of Jamaica's economic activity.

He said going cashless could lead to an increase in the level of activity because there will be fewer hidden activities. Dushyant Savadia, CEO of Amber Group, said apprehension about a digital trail may scare some people into preferring to keep cash, which is untraceable.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/busi...h-vs-cashless/

[Sir X]

The bredda who asks if mi like im coach surfaces ....lol.

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'Every Jamaican must become digital in their thinking', says Holness

In declaring that there is no reason for Jamaicans to fear the country's rapid transition towards becoming a digital society, Prime Minister Andrew Holness is urging citizens to embrace the change towards technology.

"Digital is the way, and so every Jamaican must become digital in their thinking, and that means you must have access to the internet, and that is why the Government is allocating this significant amount of resources, half-a-billion Jamaican dollars, to put up Wi-Fi access all across the country," Holness indicated.

https://jamaica.loopnews.com/content...holness-658614

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Cashing out

Traditional payments give way to digital revolution


JAMAICANS are rapidly shifting to digital channels to do transactions, shunning traditional approaches which are witnessing a significant decline in usage and popularity, according to data from the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ).

The data show that for the eight-year period 2015 to 2022 the number of transactions done through digital means more than doubled, moving from approximately 36 million transactions to just under 80 million. The value of those transactions has grown even faster, moving from $4 billion in 2015 to just over $11 billion in 2022.

And for the first six months of 2023 the growth has continued. According to BOJ data, the volume of digital transactions from January to June grew 8.3 per cent when compared to the same period last year. That as 40.3 million digital payment transactions were made during the review period versus 37.3 million such payments made a year earlier. As for the value of the transactions over the January to June period of 2023, that too has gone up 16 per cent, reaching $6.2 billion. In the same half-year period last year, it was $5.3 billion.

Digital payments refer to an electronic payment that occurs through digital or online means, without the payer or payee physically exchanging cash. The device to initiate the payment includes a computer, a mobile phone, or point-of-sale (POS) device, while the payment instrument includes an e-money product, payment-card product, credit/debit transfer, or other innovative payment products.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/cashing-out/