Ear­li­er this month, Dig­i­cel be­came the lat­est com­pa­ny to be pro­vi­sion­al­ly reg­is­tered for an ini­tial six-month pe­ri­od by the Cen­tral Bank to is­sue e-mon­ey in Trinidad and To­ba­go, through its sub­sidiary My­Cash.

Pay­Wise Ltd, TSTT (Paypr) and PESH Mon­ey (PESH) were all grant­ed full reg­is­tra­tion by the Cen­tral Bank as e-mon­ey is­suers, ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 1, 2023.

But the old­est kid on the e-mon­ey block has seen a sig­nif­i­cant surge in us­age over the past year.

Re­pub­lic Bank launched its dig­i­tal wal­let app, End­cash in March 2021. Ini­tial buy in was slow, but the bank con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that us­age of the ser­vice has dou­bled over the past year.

“We have seen a sig­nif­i­cant up­take in terms of both the num­ber of new cus­tomers, mean­ing peo­ple reg­is­ter­ing for the ser­vice, the End­cash wal­let. In terms of us­age we’ve al­so seen a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in terms of the num­ber of mer­chants that we now have on board who are will­ing to ac­cept End­cash as a pay­ment chan­nel,” said Dami­an Coop­er, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er for per­son­al seg­ments at Re­pub­lic Bank.

“I would say in terms of some specifics, we have ac­tu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced a 100 per cent growth in terms of new reg­is­tra­tions from fis­cal 2022 to fis­cal 2023. So our fis­cal ends in Sep­tem­ber, so from 2023 Sep­tem­ber over 2022 Sep­tem­ber, we have seen ac­tu­al­ly 100 per cent growth in terms of the num­ber of cus­tomers that we now have,” Coop­er con­firmed.

In terms of num­bers, Coop­er said cur­rent­ly there were about 33,000 users of the End­cash ser­vice.

Busi­ness­es too, have shown in­creased in­ter­est and ac­cep­tance of the End­cash ser­vice.

“We al­so had sig­nif­i­cant growth in terms of the num­ber of mer­chants who now ac­cept End­cash. Again 2023 over 2022 year end fis­cal, we ac­tu­al­ly had like 184 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of mer­chants who ac­cept End­cash year on year. So, we have seen that growth,” said Coop­er who ex­plained just un­der 2,000 busi­ness­es had opt­ed to use End­cash as a pay­ment op­tion.

This rise, he ex­plained, was done through some strate­gic part­ner­ships with busi­ness­es and in par­tic­u­lar food ven­dors.

“So, for ex­am­ple, 139 Wood­brook Yard, some of the ven­dors on Ari­api­ta Av­enue– a lot of street ven­dors be­cause a lot of them on­ly ac­cept cash. But we have a lot of peo­ple who don’t like to pay with cash. So it’s a nice ad­di­tion­al chan­nel for them with­out hav­ing to go through the process of nec­es­sar­i­ly open­ing an ac­count to ac­cept trans­ac­tions or to ac­cept pay­ment. So that has worked out well for those small­er busi­ness­es,” said Coop­er, who ex­plained that while small­er busi­ness­es have flocked to the ser­vice, some larg­er fran­chis­es have come on board as well.

“We al­so have some large busi­ness­es that take it. So for ex­am­ple, we had a part­ner­ship with the Restau­rants Hold­ings Ltd, the own­ers of Lit­tle Cae­sars and Popeyes and Burg­er King. So, we had a pro­mo­tion of it (there) so you have those types of mer­chants that are al­so ac­cept­ing End­cash as well. It has been a mix in terms of the size of the busi­ness, but we’re see­ing more of the small­er en­ti­ties, the small­er busi­ness­es, the street food ven­dors, go­ing for the pay­ment chan­nel,” said Coop­er.

“All in all, it is trend­ing in the right di­rec­tion in terms of new cus­tomers and us­age. But of course, we want it to con­tin­ue its up­ward trend. And we will be pro­mot­ing End­cash as a vi­able pay­ment chan­nel in this fis­cal year as well. Try­ing to in­crease the num­ber of new cus­tomers as well as the num­ber of trans­ac­tions done by these cus­tomers,” said Coop­er.

He ex­plained that in many cas­es, the small­er busi­ness­es were us­ing the ser­vice to have a cash­less op­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid con­cerns about crime and walk­ing about with cash.

The ser­vice, he ex­plained, was al­so ap­peal­ing to them as an al­ter­na­tive to the LINX card ser­vice as cur­rent­ly sign­ing up for the ser­vice is free and less cum­ber­some than open­ing a busi­ness bank ac­count.

He how­ev­er ex­plained that most small busi­ness­es were util­is­ing the per­son­al op­tion, which was cur­rent­ly has most fees waived for sign up and op­er­a­tion of the wal­let.

“We are in what we call the growth stage of the prod­uct or the in­tro­duc­to­ry stage of our prod­uct. And we re­alise that to get adop­tion of the prod­uct, we need to have some con­ces­sions. So in terms of our fees, our fees have been waived by and large, and cus­tomers can trans­act with­out fees at­tached.

“So, in terms of End­cash as a pay­ment chan­nel, right now is the best time sign up as there’s no there is no bet­ter and more af­ford­able pay­ment chan­nel,” said Coop­er.

Cur­rent­ly the on­ly fees ap­plied are a $3.50 fee to add funds to the End­cash wal­let and a $10 fee for End­cash to bank ac­count trans­fer.

“There are two ways it can be done. So if you want to reg­is­ter as a busi­ness, then you go through the process of open­ing a busi­ness ac­count with the bank. But what we have is some small­er mer­chants al­most op­er­at­ing it as an in­di­vid­ual, where­by they can ac­tu­al­ly ac­cept pay­ments. So they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to go through the process of open­ing a new ac­count with the bank. That is the pre­ferred op­tion but we have with some busi­ness­es,” he said.

How­ev­er, Coop­er ex­plained that the in­crease was al­so helped by some tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing which has helped win over some age groups which may been more re­sis­tant to dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies.

“End­cash is pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed to what we con­sid­er to be our mil­len­ni­als, those in the 18 to 40 age range. You’ll get some of the Gen Zs in there as well. So your Gen Ys and Gen Zs that will be our pri­ma­ry mar­ket. How­ev­er, you would have those per­sons hav­ing par­ents, who pos­si­bly still de­pend on their par­ents for some sort of fi­nanc­ing.

“What we do is we try to tar­get that old­er seg­ment in terms of cre­at­ing an aware­ness of the prod­uct and show­ing them not on­ly how to use the prod­uct from a pur­chas­ing per­spec­tive, but as a mon­ey trans­fer chan­nel,” said Coop­er.

Apart from the in­creased us­age of End­cash, the bank has al­so not­ed a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ac­tiv­i­ty in the loan mar­ket.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly on the in­crease in terms of de­mand com­pared to 2020 and 2021. Those years were, of course, un­usu­al­ly chal­leng­ing in terms of de­mand for cred­it, but last year 2022 we saw an in­crease in de­mand and over this fis­cal year and com­ing in­to this Christ­mas sea­son, we are al­so see­ing an in­crease in de­mand. So it’s trend­ing pos­i­tive­ly from our per­spec­tive, in terms of de­mand for cred­it fa­cil­i­ties. And we are try­ing to as­sist in what­ev­er we can,” said Coop­er.

How­ev­er, while there has been an in­crease in de­mand for cred­it, the trends re­mains the same in terms of ac­tiv­i­ty. 

“Debt con­sol­i­da­tion and re­fi­nanc­ing con­tin­ue to be our big sell­ers. That’s ac­tu­al­ly how it was pre-COVID. And we al­so con­tin­ue to see high de­mand for ve­hi­cle loans, as well as per­son­al loans. So we haven’t seen any changes in terms of the top five loan cat­e­gories or loan pur­pose. It has not changed.

“Debt con­sol­i­da­tion, re­fi­nanc­ing per­son­al loans, ve­hi­cle loans, home eq­ui­ty, mean­ing for home im­prove­ment or home re­pairs etc. They have tra­di­tion­al­ly been your top sell­ers or the loans in most de­mand, and they con­tin­ue to be like that,” said Coop­er.