The St James Municipal Corporation and Mastercard have forged a partnership to digitise payment systems for traders operating at the Harbour Street and Old Fort Craft Markets in Montego Bay.

This collaboration was formalised with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) during the St James Municipal Corporation/Mastercard Vendor Engagement Event and Training at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre in Sam Sharpe Square on Tuesday, February 18.

The signing formed part of ongoing digitisation programmes aimed at equipping micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with digital payment acceptance technology.

Additionally, this initiative is a critical component in advancing craft traders in Jamaica’s tourism capital who received crucial digital and financial literacy training to better position themselves in the evolving marketplace.

The collaboration is being supported by the National Commercial Bank (NCB), which is facilitating accessibility for the vendors.

Corporation Chairman and Mayor of Montego Bay, Councillor Richard Vernon, told JIS News that the “pioneering” programme, which began in August 2024, is already showing promising outcomes with approximately 40 per cent of vendors now utilising the digital payment technology.

Councillor Vernon said the Corporation anticipates reaching an 80 per cent adoption rate by the second quarter of fiscal year 2025/26.

“They have seen significant improvement in their sales, so we are providing opportunities for them to reach out to the customers (tourists) who then come into their space and can actually do their transaction digitally,” he pointed out.

“We are also helping to ensure that our [craft] traders can tap into the tourism value chain and that no one is left behind in this big thrust to enhance tourism in Jamaica,” the mayor added.

Councillor Vernon advised of plans to introduce similar systems in other locations and to other stakeholders, including the Charles Gordon Market and vendors participating in the Safe Food Programme.

President of the Harbour Street Craft Market, Carol McLennon, said prior to the initiative’s introduction, vendors were losing significant business opportunities due to their inability to process credit and debit card payments. She pointed out that the new system not only enables them to capture these sales but also facilitates their personal digital payments and expenses.

“We applaud them for taking time out to come to little businesses like ours to make it bigger, more beneficial to us across the craft industry and the tourism sector as a whole,” McLennon said.

She added that the initiative is timely, “because there’s a lot of older folks in the market that don’t know how to use technology, and they took time out to teach us how to use the machines so as to enable us to make more money, and we do appreciate the effort”.

The transformation has been particularly meaningful for long-time craft traders like Petula Rhodes, who has been in the business at the Old Fort Craft Market since 1999. She indicated that the introduction of card machines has made their operations more profitable and competitive, which addresses the issue of visitors increasingly travelling without cash, adding that “now we need more tourists coming out to the craft markets”.

Meanwhile, Mastercard Country Manager for the English Caribbean, Dalton Fowles, said the partnership addresses two key strategic pillars—small and medium enterprise (SME) digitisation and tourism economic development.

He pointed out that by working closely with the Municipal Corporation, Mastercard aims to modernise micro and small businesses throughout Montego Bay.

The potential impact is substantial, as Montego Bay hosts nearly 600 formally recognised vendors in designated vending locations with an estimated 4,000 additional informal traders operating in the region, the Country Manager further indicated.

“We’re really happy to be a part of this event, of this activity, because we believe it’s [transformational for] a lot of small businesses,” Fowles said.