The Cen­tral Bank is in the process of rolling out a mo­bile-to-mo­bile, fast pay­ments sys­tem along the lines of In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI).

In its lat­est pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries, which was re­leased on Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank sought to ex­plain how a sys­tem like UPI can be a ma­jor game chang­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The note said, "In­dia’s pop­u­la­tion is 1,000 times that of Trinidad and To­ba­go and its land area is 640 times ours. Since 2016, In­dia has been on a suc­cess­ful jour­ney to in­tro­duce a ‘fast pay­ments’ sys­tem to most of its pop­u­la­tion us­ing a sys­tem called the Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI). Over the years, UPI has rev­o­lu­tionised how ba­sic pay­ments are made in this large, pop­u­lous na­tion from us­ing most­ly cash to us­ing main­ly mo­bile de­vices (cell­phones)."

The Cen­tral Bank said while there are a wide range of op­tions for pay­ments of goods and ser­vices, "in­di­vid­u­als typ­i­cal­ly use cash, checks, on­line In­ter­net trans­fers, deb­it and cred­it cards, while fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er busi­ness­es al­so utilise so called ACH (au­to­mat­ic clear­ing house) and RT­GS (re­al time gross set­tle­ments) arrange­ments to move funds."

The note con­tin­ued, "What’s miss­ing is a na­tion­wide fast pay­ments sys­tem al­low­ing for easy, se­cure and al­most in­stan­ta­neous trans­fer of funds us­ing cell­phones along the lines of In­dia’s UPI, or for that mat­ter equiv­a­lent arrange­ments in many oth­er coun­tries like Brazil, Kenya and Chi­na."

In the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion note, the Cen­tral Bank gave the ex­am­ple of a cus­tomer wish­ing to buy four dou­bles. It said once the cus­tomer has a work­ing mo­bile phone, the UPI app down­loaded to their phone and mon­ey in the bank, the cus­tomer can trans­fer mon­ey to the dou­bles ven­dor's ac­count.

The Bank al­so not­ed that the fast pay­ment sys­tem can al­so be used to: trans­fer mon­ey from one per­son to an­oth­er; pay util­i­ty bills; make do­na­tions (‘col­lec­tion’ at church ser­vices) and re­ceiv­ing grants from the Gov­ern­ment.

The Cen­tral Bank said a ‘pi­lot’ is be­ing sched­uled for the first half of 2025 to test the sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the aim to have the sys­tem ful­ly func­tion­al by the end of 2025.

The Cen­tral Bank said with this sys­tem, in­di­vid­u­als would be less in­clined to walk with cash and as a re­sult would be less prone to rob­bery.

Well, what’s the dif­fer­ence com­pared to how you can pay for stuff now?

Ba­si­cal­ly, with this fast pay­ments sys­tem, the note added, "you can eas­i­ly keep track of your fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions and bal­ances. You al­so won’t need to wait for a check to be cleared or to car­ry around deb­it or cred­it cards. The cost to use UPI for the sender and re­ceiv­er will be very low or ze­ro."

The Cen­tral Bank said while it would en­cour­age the use of the UPI, it would not be manda­to­ry.

The Bank said, "It may be pru­dent to keep a small bit of cash for emer­gency pur­pos­es and make use of on­line trans­fers, cred­it/deb­it cards de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances. As with any fi­nan­cial al­ter­na­tive, peo­ple will need to get a ba­sic un­der­stand­ing of how it works, how to use it, and what to do in case of prob­lems," said the Cen­tral Bank, adding that like any oth­er dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty de­fens­es (pass­word man­age­ment, care re­gard­ing on­line scams etc.).

"In this re­gard, a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme will be launched to ex­plain these mat­ters," the Cen­tral Bank said.

The note closed, "A ro­bust telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture is es­sen­tial, along­side strong Cen­tral Bank su­per­vi­sion."