Mastercard signals intention to support SMEs

Jamaica Gleaner | 2025-12-04 | Original Article

MIAMI, Florida:

 

Mastercard has signalled its intention to support Jamaica’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, which devastated much of the sector and caused an estimated US$8.8 billion in overall economic damage.

 

Without offering specifics, Dalton Fowles, country manager for Mastercard in Jamaica, said the global payment company, through its partners, has made proposals in that respect.

 

“We do have proposals through various stakeholder agencies and the Government that we are pending feedback on, and we are very keen on helping the recovery of the Jamaican economy- specifically the micro SME segment,” he told The Gleaner at Mastercard’s Latin American and Caribbean Innovation Forum 2025 in Miami, Florida.

 

Jamaica’s SME sector, which contributes 44 per cent to the island’s gross domestic product, took a major blow from the Category 5 storm.

 

Garnett Reid, president of the Small Business Association of Jamaica (SBAJ), told The Gleaner recently that SBAJ assessments of the damage caused by the hurricane are ongoing, but warned that total losses for micro, small and medium enterprises could reach hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, once calculations are completed by the end of this month.

 

However, preliminary findings indicate that hundreds of small businesses in St Elizabeth alone have been affected, with damage spanning shopkeepers, farmers, restaurants, dressmakers, shoemakers, pharmacies and roadside vendors.

 

Similar destruction has been reported in Trelawny, Hanover, St Mary, and St James. In Montego Bay and surrounding communities, including Catherine Hall, entire business clusters were wiped out.

 

Reid called for the Government to provide immediate direct grants of $300,000 to $500,000, and for financial institutions to impose immediate moratoriums on loan and insurance payments, warning that operators cannot restart while burdened by existing financial obligations.

 

There are approximately 425,000 small businesses operating in Jamaica, but only about 14,000 are officially registered.

 

Stating that Mastercard is deeply invested in digitising, driving financial inclusion and empowering SMEs, Fowles said there are a lot of opportunities to bring small businesses into the formal economy.

 

In October, he unveiled the global payment network’s plan to include 50,000 micro-businesses in the formal economy by 2030, an expansion of its broader initiative to digitise small enterprises.

 

At the time, Fowles, who is also country manager for Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, said this programme would include the entire Caribbean. He shared, too, that discussions were already under way and in an advanced phase, as Mastercard would be engaging SMEs through its public-private partnerships.

 

While Hurricane Melissa may have temporarily slowed down those plans in Jamaica, he noted that there is now an “opportunity where the market, the Government, and all the key stakeholders now recognise how important it is to digitise the economy”.

 

“While we may have a temporary setback in terms of some of the work that we were doing, I think it also has created a renewed effort and renewed awareness of how important it is to really empower these microbusinesses to become part of the digital economy,” he stressed.

 

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com

 

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