The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT), in a re­sponse to the de­ci­sion by the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion's (PDA) to stop ac­cept­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ments at gas sta­tions be­cause of in­creased op­er­at­ing costs, has un­der­scored the im­mense ben­e­fits elec­tron­ic pay­ments of­fer to cus­tomers and mer­chants.

"Elec­tron­ic pay­ments–both deb­it and cred­it cards–pro­vide cus­tomers with con­ve­nience and ease of do­ing busi­ness, as well as safe­guards them against un­want­ed at­ten­tion from hav­ing too much cash in their pos­ses­sion," BATT said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

"In to­day's fast paced world, as cus­tomers be­come more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy, elec­tron­ic pay­ments are the norm, mak­ing cus­tomers' lives eas­i­er. Fur­ther­more, for the mer­chant/re­tail­er, pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions elec­tron­i­cal­ly saves time and mon­ey and en­ables them to at­tract cus­tomers who do not wish to keep cash in their pos­ses­sion.

"As BATT con­tin­ues in its thrust to­wards en­hanced cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and the ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness of bank­ing ser­vices and prod­ucts that help en­rich the lives of cus­tomers, the As­so­ci­a­tion is hope­ful that an­oth­er so­lu­tion can be reached."

On Wednes­day, the PDA an­nounced that its sta­tions will no longer of­fer elec­tion­ic pay­ment op­tions ef­fec­tive to­day. How­ev­er, mo­torists will still be able to pay for fu­el us­ing deb­it and cred­it cards at sta­tions op­er­at­ed by Unipet and at NP's 60 owned and op­er­at­ed sta­tions.

NP is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry yes­ter­day, list­ing all its sta­tions where elec­tron­ic pay­ments are still be­ing ac­cept­ed.

"NP is aware of the con­cerns of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion; how­ev­er we be­lieve this stance is not in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic and the com­pa­ny re­it­er­ates the call to all of its deal­ers to ac­cept elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions to en­sure that the pub­lic is ad­e­quate­ly served," the com­pa­ny said.