Three more worth knowing about
These did not make the ranking, either because they are brokers rather than exchanges or because their
relevance to Jamaica is narrower. They still come up often enough to deserve a straight answer.
What it is. Card-first broker with a fixed, quoted price and no order book to learn.
Our read. Handy for a one-off purchase. You pay for that simplicity in the spread.
What it is. Barbados-headquartered Caribbean fintech that has historically supported JMD alongside BBD and TTD.
Our read. The closest thing to a regional player. Its focus has shifted toward central-bank infrastructure, so check what is open to retail before planning around it.
What it is. Very low spot fees and thousands of listings.
Our read. A tool for experienced traders chasing new tokens, not a place to park savings.
Desk note · the Bitt question
We get asked about Bitt more than any other name, because it is Caribbean and because older guides
still list it as the JMD exchange. The honest position: Bitt built its reputation on regional fiat
rails and did historically support Jamaican dollars, but its centre of gravity has moved toward
central-bank and institutional infrastructure rather than retail trading. Do not plan a purchase
around it without checking directly what is currently open to individuals.
What to walk away from
The riskiest thing in this market is not choosing the wrong exchange from the list above. It is
choosing something that is not an exchange at all. Four patterns account for almost every loss we hear
about from Jamaica.
The WhatsApp "trading platform". Someone shows you a dashboard where your balance
rises daily. There is no exchange behind it. Withdrawals work for small amounts until they suddenly
require a "tax payment" first. Jamaica has already lived through this at scale — a digital-currency
scheme reported to have drawn in tens of thousands of Jamaicans collapsed in 2024, with the Financial
Services Commission warning the public afterwards to avoid unregulated investment schemes.
The guaranteed-return "fund". Any promise of a fixed percentage per week or month from
crypto trading is a promise nobody can keep. Markets do not produce guaranteed returns; Ponzi
structures produce them right up until they stop.
The exchange with no licence page. Every operator in our table names a regulator
somewhere. If a platform cannot tell you which authority supervises it and under what reference, that
is the entire review.
The helpful stranger. Nobody legitimate needs your seed phrase, your screen shared, or
remote access to your phone to "help you verify". Read our
crypto scams and red flags page before you talk to anyone offering
to set an account up for you.
Picking one in five minutes
If you want a decision rather than a survey, answer three questions. First: is this purchase under
about J$150,000? If yes, pay the card fee on a licensed venue and stop optimising — the wire and
conversion costs of the "cheap" route will eat the saving. Second: do you want to move Jamaican dollars
in and out by local bank transfer? If yes, you need a peer-to-peer board, and you should read the
P2P guide before your first trade rather than after it.
Third: are you buying to hold for years? If yes, weight custody and reserve transparency above fees,
and plan to move coins to your own wallet anyway.
For most people reading this in Jamaica, the answers are yes, no and yes — which points at one
licensed card-friendly account plus a hardware wallet, and nothing else. That is a boring conclusion,
and it is the one that survives contact with reality.
Primary sources & further reading