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Jamaicans still prefer cash transactions

Published:Friday | February 7, 2020 | 3:26 PM
Celeste McCalla, (centre) Senior Legal Counsel at the Bank of Jamaica chats with Dr Rickert Allen (right), Chairman of Jamaica Institute of Financial Services (JIFS) and Darelene Jones, Executive Director of JIFS. The occasion was the Jamaica Institute of Financial Services and the Jamaica Bankers Association Board of Director/CEO anti-money laundering seminar at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston on Friday, February 7, 2020 - Rudolph Brown photo

Despite the availability of technology to make transactions more seamless, Jamaica’s booming informal sector continues to make cash transactions attractive.

Senior legal counsel at Bank of Jamaica, Celeste McCalla, is charging that Jamaica’s dependence on cash to conduct business is a risk factor that must be addressed so as to improve the image of the country’s financial sector.

“We are one of those jurisdictions that is recognised as having a cash-based economy, so that does give us a particular risk profile,” McCalla said.

She was addressing players in the financial sector this morning during a board of directors and chief executive officers anti-money laundering breakfast seminar at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.

“For all our acceptance of the electronic products and all the ATM, all the electronic products that we have around the place and the cards etc, at the end of the day, we really trust what we can feel,” noted McCalla who was trained as a Caribbean Financial Action Task Force assessor.

The task force is an organisation of states and territories of the Caribbean basin which have agreed to implement common counter-measures against money laundering.

McCalla has been instrumental in the development of regulatory regimes at the central bank and has assisted with the development of regulatory regimes such as those for money transfer and remittance agents and agencies.

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