Multilink offers Jamaicans ready access to their money 24 hours, seven days a week.
-FileDennise Williams, Staff Reporter
CONSUMERS USING their debit cards, through the Multilink system, spent $6.3 billion during the third quarter (July to September) of 2004, according to data from JETS, operators of the Multilink network.
Multilink is the system by which consumers have access to their bank, building society and credit union accounts by way of electronic connections to Automated Banking Machines (ABMs) and in store Point of Sale (POS) terminals. Multilink does not take into account spending by cash, cheques or credit cards.
The months of July to September are generally considered the back-to-school shopping season. However, this year consumers had to dip into their pockets for preparations for Hurricane Ivan. According to General Manager of JETS, Edmundo Jenez, "Overall [compared to September 2003] withdrawal amounts increased by 25.95 per cent and withdrawal transactions increased 15.76 per cent."
MORE SPENDING
And in the April to June period of this year, Jamaicans spent $5.9 billion with their debit cards. Essentially this means that Multilink users spent seven per cent more in the third quarter.
These Multilink numbers support the findings of the Jamaica Conference Board (JCB) which revealed that for the third quarter of 2004, consumers were optimistic about the economy and had greater spending plans. During the October 12 release of consumer confidence numbers, presenter Professor Richard Curtin, said, "Jamaican consumers voiced their most positive assessments of current economic conditions in nearly two years. Among all Jamaicans, 60 per cent rated current economic conditions as average or better than average in the third quarter of 2004 survey, up from last year's low of 44 per cent." And although consumers did worry about good jobs being hard to find, the JCB findings showed that spending was buoyed by remittances received. In fact, one-third of all Jamaican households received remittances at least once per month.
In breaking down the third quarter numbers, the average spending for the ABM was $3,366 per transaction and consumers spent on average $2,509 at the POS terminals in stores. Looking at the number of transactions, Jamaicans successfully withdrew funds from the ABMs 1.3 million times and completed 777,000 POS transactions during the third quarter.
MORE MACHINES
As more and more consumers turn to plastic for their transactions, retailers and financial institutions are answering the call and providing the terminals in convenient locations. Mr. Jenez told Wednesday Business that between July and September, banks installed four new ABMs and merchants installed 355 new POS terminals in their stores. "In total, there are 336 ABMs and 8,812 POS terminals online (across Jamaica)," he pointed out.
However, these terminals did not escape the wrath of Hurricane Ivan. According to Mr. Jenez, "The figures for September 2004 were lower than expected due to the passage of Hurricane Ivan (September 10-11) where the network was shut down for effectively three days." He added, "Even after the restoration of network service on Monday, September 13, widespread power outages affected many of the ABM terminals and most of the POS terminals across the country. However, by the end of September 2004, over 90 per cent of the terminals were operating as the electricity supply was restored to most of the
country."
Mr. Jenez is upbeat that Jamaicans have embraced the concept of paying with plastic as evidenced by the steady increase of persons using debit cards. "We ended the quarter with 220,679 cardholders online for the month of September 2004. This is up from the June 2004 figure of 214,232 at the end of the second quarter. New cardholders joined the network at an average rate of about 788 per day in September 2004."
