Even today, more than 70% of transactions across the Caribbean are still cash. In many islands the figure is higher.
Read it as a failure and it is discouraging. Read it properly and it is the opportunity. A region where 7 in 10 payments have not moved yet is not a market that has been done. It is one that has barely started.
Why the opportunity is growing rather than shrinking
Saturated markets are the ones where every merchant already accepts every method and the only way to grow is to take share from a competitor. That is not this. Here the growth is sitting in transactions that currently happen in cash: the tour operator taking notes at the dock, the guesthouse settling on arrival, the restaurant that never took a card because nobody made it easy.
From tourism and hospitality through government services to small business, the gap between a cash-heavy economy and a digital-first one is where the work is.
What we are building to close it
Apple Pay and Google Pay acceptance through e-commerce, so a visitor pays the way they pay at home.
Card network tokenization, and not only for recurring billing. Through Click to Pay it applies to one-off payments too, which means less fraud exposure for the merchant and a faster checkout for the customer.
The CX PayMe e-wallet, already serving Curaçao and Sint Maarten and expanding to other islands, including a financial literacy element through sub-accounts.
Deep integration into the leisure booking systems the region's hospitality sector already runs on, so payments fit the workflow rather than sitting beside it.
And integrated merchant hardware and software, including unattended and kiosk solutions, because a meaningful share of the cash in this region is taken where there is no member of staff standing at a till.
The real story
The Caribbean is not oversaturated. It is underserved. The words point to very different opportunities, and only one of them is worth building for.