MONDAY INTERVIEW: AUDREY MARKS - Making her Mark - Paymaster
founder broadens her horizons
published: Daily Gleaner Monday | January 30, 2006
Barbara Ellington, Lifestyle Editor
Audrey Marks, Paymaster mogul and the first female president of the American Chamber of Commerce, has blazed a trail to become one
of Jamaica's most powerful business leaders. - WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
THE PAYMASTER story began with an idea in the mind of its conceptualiser-turned-managing director
and chairman, Audrey Marks.
Back then, she was employed to Telecommunications of Jamaica as the person in charge of
finance planning. She saw that company projections were showing a significant increase in
telephone access in Jamaica, but no correspondent planning was being made for access to
payment points. It stuck with her that collecting even one per cent would be a great source of
revenue.
Years later, she became a realtor, commuting between Jamaica and the United States.
Having to make a bill payment on one occasion, the thought again struck that there had be a
simplier way to pay bills. That was in 1994, and there was no system available to do mass
collection of bills; online was relatively unknown.
Then, many persons considered Marks crazy, but through the support of Maurice
McNaughton, who started Jamaica On-Line, she procured the hardware, software and
network support for the architecture of the system designed. It was then that she began to
knock on clients' doors, but had to wait for three years when, in 1997, Jamaica Public
Service Company Limited opened theirs, allowing Paymaster Jamaica Limited to test the
system.
Marks is quick to stress the importance of self-belief because she pursued a system that was
nowhere else in the world and offered it first here, and then to the world. And, she had no
technology training. The experience taught her it's OK to dream.
Out of that idea an industry was born. Third-party payments that now take place as a matter
of course was not part of our lifestyle eight years ago. Banks made batch payments and
relayed them seven days later; Paymaster is capable of same-day payments. And as
testament to the strength of their system, all tenders are accepted, including cheques. Most
locations are open on Saturdays and on weekdays up to 7:00 p.m.
She looks forward to the day when the Planning Institute of Jamaica or the Statistical Institute
of Jamaica will calculate the saving in manhours and energy cost for the difference that
Paymaster has made. This is not yet recognised.
The married mother of two is staunchly supportive of Jamaica and plans to remain in her
homeland. But there were challenges along the way, and Marks revealed them in this
interview.
BE: What were some of the challenges that you have faced along the road to building
Paymaster Jamaica?
AM: Paymaster was in the midst of the '90s financial sector meltdown so it was almost
impossible to find investors. Fortunately, I had always been involved in business from trading
to real estate and had acquired some assets. I was able to sell them in order to start.
But even with that it is hard to get assistance, and we need to get serious about driving
growth through facilitating development at the small and medium level.
We cannot borrow our way into prosperity. If we get serious about growth as a policy, with all
the agencies we have, it would not be difficult to encourage a young person to go from idea
to business-plan, to funding to reality. We have the Jamaica Business Development Centre
and JAMPRO, but Government still needs to prioritise and encourage it through full
facilitation.
Then we had the challenge of managing growth; that was not taught in my MBA course as a
process we need to learn. We begin with an idea, but we become a finance, HR, IT,
marketing and operations manager and have to learn all aspects of the business until we can
afford to put the expertise in place. That is in the growth phase, because sometimes volume
grows before profit, which allows the expansion of cost base.
The third challenge for many entrepreneurs is that when you acquire the expertise, it's
knowing when to delegate and let people use their creativity to add value to the business. At
this time at Paymaster, I am in a second phase of organising to have the best people in place
to take the company public so there will be no limit to where we can go.
BE: Is there a timeline on going public?
AM: I am looking at the next 12-15 months.
BE: What has been your biggest surprise in running Paymaster?
AM: The most surprising thing has been the public acceptance. We have over 140 locations,
even with closures, and over 1,242,000 (persons) have used the Paymaster service either for
bill payments, remittances, phone cards, visa fees or toll charges. The most amazing thing is
how people accepted us, trusted us and gave us referrals so we could have grown mostly by
word of mouth. In the early days we could not afford any marketing campaigns.