Sean Nero

Chair­man of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) Emile Elias is op­ti­mistic that the com­pa­ny can re­gain lost mar­ket share in less than five years. He said with the in­tro­duc­tion of the bmo­bile Pre­paid Visa Card, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to sharp­en its com­pet­i­tive edge.

Speak­ing at Mon­day's launch of the pre­paid card by bmo­bile and Re­pub­lic Bank, at TSTT House, Port-of-Spain, Elias said TSTT's new vi­sion is to re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty and scup­per gains made by oth­er op­er­a­tors in the sec­tor.

He said the in­tro­duc­tion of mo­bile mon­ey is the first in a se­ries of ex­cit­ing cus­tomer cen­tred ini­tia­tives prod­ucts be­ing rolled out.

"We have new lead­er­ship both at the board and at the se­nior man­age­ment lev­el. We have a new vi­sion and we have a very new and clear road map that leads us in­to the fu­ture, which is a five-year strate­gic plan.

"So the is­sue that I find that is now be­fore our new board of di­rec­tors, which would have been in of­fice for some ten months, is not whether we change TSTT or not, but whether we man­age change or al­low change to man­age us. That is our chal­lenge. As I have ex­pe­ri­enced our board and the way that they re­act to all the ini­tia­tives that we talk about, I can say with­out any hes­i­ta­tion that we ful­ly in­tend, not just to make sure we are do­ing things right, but to make sure that we are do­ing the right things as well."

TSTT CEO Dr Ronald Wal­cott de­scribed the new elec­tron­ic pay­ment fa­cil­i­ty as ful­ly per­son­alised and man­aged on­ly from the cus­tomers' bmo­bile hand­set. From on-line pur­chas­es, to over­seas trav­els, as well as lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ATM us­age, it is geared to­ward en­hanc­ing the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in day-to-day pur­chas­es.

Wal­cott said the in­te­gra­tion of the pre­paid card in the pay­ment eco-sys­tem rep­re­sent­ed more than a rev­enue di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ty for TSTT.

"Through our in­tro­duc­tion of mo­bile fi­nan­cial ser­vices, TSTT is fun­da­men­tal­ly sup­port­ing the wider econ­o­my as we em­brace changes to the way in which cit­i­zens in T&T are able to ac­cess fi­nan­cial ser­vices. Through the bmo­bile pre­paid visa card, they will have the con­ve­nience and reach of a cred­it card, but with the con­trol and se­cu­ri­ty of a chip and pin deb­it card.

"You on­ly spend what you put on to your card. In ad­di­tion to the card's lat­est chip and pin tech­nol­o­gy, cus­tomers can al­so mit­i­gate against fraud due to app alerts with every pur­chase. Our cus­tomers will im­me­di­ate­ly en­joy con­verged bills (mo­bile and res­i­den­tial) and have the con­ve­nience of do­ing di­rect top-up.

"With its per­son-to-per­son bal­ance trans­fer, the bmo­bile pre­paid visa card of­fers a very com­pet­i­tive al­ter­na­tive to Mon­ey­Gram or sim­i­lar ser­vices. Fur­ther, com­pa­nies can eas­i­ly do ex­pense re­im­burse­ments and load salaries di­rect­ly to the card. So while we are in the process of trans­form­ing our­selves in­to an ag­ile broad­band com­pa­ny, we are al­so trans­form­ing our fel­low cit­i­zens in­to 21st cen­tu­ry con­nect­ed cus­tomers."