With a well-established telecommunications base and extensive banking and financial infrastructure Jamaica is well positioned to introduce and benefit from a managed, integrated Mobile Financial Services (MFS) platform. Mobile phones have become indispensable over the past 10 years with active subscribers now attaining a penetration rate in excess of 100 per cent. Deposit and remittance inflows have, over roughly the same period, experienced annual growth rates of 8.76% and 5.8% respectively. At the same time, relatively small financial transactions are bedevilled by inconvenience and high negotiating costs. Taken together, these factors make a compelling argument for the development of an MFS sector which, experience elsewhere has shown,
can generate tremendous benefits for all stakeholders. An MFS platform would include mobile banking (m-banking) that is, the provision of account information; transaction opportunities; mobile payments (m-payments), and other financial services facilitated by mobile phones.