The Exchange | Local digital entrepreneurs demand better banking solutions
Published:Friday | December 28, 2018 | 12:00 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
Gordon Swaby, CEO and founder of the social learning website EduFocal, is calling on financial institutions to create better banking solutions for local digital entrepreneurs to facilitate the collection of revenue from their customers.
"The e-commerce space in Jamaica is generally a mess. It needs work, and I know that there are entities working on it. You know, mobile money creates real value in Jamaica but also still has a a far way to go in terms of take-up.
"The fact is, more than 80 per cent of transactions done in Jamaica are done through cash, which is bad. We need to digitise payments in Jamaica," said Swaby during the latest edition of the Financial Gleaner-Jamaica News Network business forum, The Exchange.
Also at the forum was founder and CEO of Jamaica Care Packages Rory-Craig Walker, who echoed similar sentiments.
"Collecting credit-card payments in Jamaica is a huge problem. We all know it. When I started four years ago, the only way I could collect money was from PayPal, and then I had to wait two weeks to get a cheque and three weeks to clear the cheque. That's definitely unacceptable trying to do business as a local company here," said Walker.
SEAMLESS PROCESS
He charged that to make the process more seamless, he had to go overseas for a solution.
"So, what I had to do, I actually had to register a company in the US, get an actual US bank account, send all of the fees there, and then do a wire to my local bank account.
"And I would say that in 2018, that's not good enough. So I would say that the banks definitely need to implement something for local small entrepreneurs to collect money from their customers," added Walker.