Mastercard and PCMI: Powering a 2030-ready economy by expanding digital acceptance

New study highlights how increasing digital payment acceptance can help unlock business growth in Jamaica

• Jamaica snapshot: In Jamaica, 8% of small merchants have a POS and contactless penetration is at 56% — representing a significant growth opportunity for small and micro merchants through expanded digital payment acceptance.
• Cash remains dominant in everyday spending, accounting for roughly 72% of personal consumption payment volume - highlighting a major opportunity to deliver faster, simpler, and more secure checkout experiences through expanded digital payment acceptance.
• Top opportunity verticals in Jamaica include SMEs, transit, government payments and taxes, and tourism.
• Payment acceptance is rapidly evolving through cloud technology, new market players, and AI. Innovations such as Mastercard tokenization and AI-driven solutions are improving security, reducing friction, and enabling new services for businesses and consumers.

The full study is available here: Powering the future of commerce in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.pdf 

A new regional study by Mastercard and Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence (PCMI) highlights a strong trend of merchants and small businesses across Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean increasingly accepting digital payments. The report illustrates how this shift helps merchants reach more customers, operate more efficiently, and support stronger local economies.

As commerce becomes more digital, connected, and data-driven, the acceptance infrastructure built today will shape how fully merchants can participate in the economy of the next decade. A 2030-ready economy requires businesses to meet evolving consumer expectations, adopt secure technologies, and compete effectively in a digital marketplace. Expanding modern, scalable acceptance is essential to ensure that growing digital demand translates into higher productivity, broader inclusion, and resilient business growth.

“Jamaica presents a clear opportunity to bring more businesses into the digital payments’ ecosystem at a time when cash still accounts for a significant share of everyday transactions. Helping close this gap will be key to enabling businesses to reach more customers, operate more efficiently, and fully participate in Jamaica’s digital economy,” says Dalton Fowles, Country Manager for Jamaica at Mastercard.

The report, “Powering the future of commerce in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean: Scaling digital acceptance for a 2030-ready economy”, highlights that in Jamaica, 8% of merchants have a point-of-sale (POS) solution to accept digital payments. With just 11 POS terminals per 1,000 inhabitants, there is clear room to expand acceptance across the island.

The study highlights a clear takeaway: as more consumers shift toward digital payments, expanding acceptance across micro and small merchants and diverse underpenetrated verticals, including transit, SMEs, transit, government payment and taxes, and tourism, can help merchants capture additional sales and better serve customer preferences.

However, cash remains widely used for everyday purchases reinforcing the opportunity to further accelerate digital acceptance. Across the region, cash accounts for an estimated 58% of personal consumption payment volume; in Jamaica, it represents approximately 72% of personal consumption expenditure.

At the same time, advances in payment technology are making digital transactions faster and more seamless for both consumers and businesses. The report highlights the growing role of contactless payments in streamlining checkout and enhancing convenience. Adoption is already strong in parts of the region, while still offering room for growth. The study estimates contactless usage at 34% in Mexico, 83% in Central America, and 73% in the Caribbean; in Jamaica, it stands at 56%—highlighting both strong adoption in parts of the region and the opportunity to further expand tap-to-pay experiences for consumers and merchants. 

“The region doesn’t have digital payments demand problem—it has an acceptance gap. This gap can be closed by deploying new business models, fit-for-purpose technology, innovative merchant services and ecosystem collaboration that deliver true value for both merchants, creating unprecedented industry scale and dynamism,” says Lindsay Lehr Tutson, Managing Director at PCMI. 

Expanding digital acceptance can help merchants get paid faster, reduce the risks of handling cash, reach more customers—including online—and build a transaction history that can support access to services such as credit.

“Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean represent one of the most significant untapped digital acceptance opportunities in the Americas. Millions of consumers are ready to pay digitally, yet too many merchants remain outside the formal payments ecosystem. If we do not act decisively to close this acceptance gap now, we risk slowing the region’s economic potential. Expanding digital acceptance is the single most powerful lever to accelerate payment growth, reduce friction and informality, and unlock shared prosperity across the ecosystem,” says Kiki Del Valle, Division President, North LAC at Mastercard. 

As the region advances toward a 2030-ready economy, Mastercard technology is supporting the scale of modern acceptance through cloud platforms, tokenization, biometrics, AI-driven services, and embedded payments—helping make payments faster, more secure, and seamless for businesses of all sizes.

With these capabilities increasingly accessible, the focus now is on scaling adoption. Across the payments ecosystem, industry leaders can accelerate the use of cloud-based and tokenized infrastructure, strengthen trust through AI and biometrics, and expand embedded payments into everyday experiences—unlocking new opportunities for small businesses and shaping the future of commerce across the region.

Methodology
To define the roadmap for payment acceptance toward 2026 and 2030, Mastercard and consulting firm PCMI analyzed the North LAC region (Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean). The methodology combined data from central banks and regulators with interviews with more than 20 executives from fintechs, processors and acquirers to capture both market performance and on-the-ground perspectives.