Dutch-Caribbean fin­tech com­pa­ny, Gi­ra­sol Pay­ments, and glob­al tech­nol­o­gy gi­ant Mas­ter­card, have an­nounced a six-year part­ner­ship to build the dig­i­tal pay­ment in­fra­struc­ture for the re­gion.

“This part­ner­ship fo­cus­es on lever­ag­ing Mas­ter­card’s net­work, ex­per­tise, and sup­port through Gi­ra­sol so that na­tion­al banks, cred­it unions, and fin­techs in this re­gion can ac­cess Mas­ter­card’s ser­vices and prod­ucts faster, eas­i­er, and tai­lored to their needs. Mas­ter­card is bet­ting on the re­gion and se­cur­ing strate­gic part­ners like Gi­ra­sol to cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties lo­cal­ly in the new dig­i­tal econ­o­my,” a re­lease an­nounc­ing the part­ner­ship stat­ed yes­ter­day.

As part of this part­ner­ship, Gi­ra­sol and Mas­ter­card said they will bring new point of sale and ac­cep­tance tech­nolo­gies, “such as Mas­ter­card’s tap-on-phone, to mom-pop shops, help­ing them cap­ture new cus­tomers in lo­cal mar­kets.”

Gi­ra­sol will al­so of­fer its part­ners the abil­i­ty to is­sue Mas­ter­card cards, be­com­ing a one-stop pay­ments part­ner for the Caribbean, it stat­ed.

Gi­ra­sol is a fin­tech com­pa­ny based out of Cu­raçao with a pres­ence in all the Dutch is­lands.

It has been op­er­at­ing for over four years and serv­ing banks and cred­it unions in the re­gion with pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions.

“We start­ed Gi­ra­sol as a lo­cal pay­ment com­pa­ny and at once recog­nised the op­por­tu­ni­ty and po­ten­tial there is in pay­ments and fin­tech as emerg­ing in­dus­tries. How our so­ci­ety is pay­ing and get­ting paid has changed over time and will con­tin­ue evolv­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Caribbean mar­ket has not been able to ben­e­fit from the lat­est pay­ment in­no­va­tions due to un­scal­able tech­nolo­gies and so­lu­tions. There­fore, we take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at Gi­ra­sol to con­stant­ly in­vest in mak­ing the pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy ac­ces­si­ble to all play­ers in the ecosys­tem”, said Mar­wan Rozi­er, CEO and founder of Gi­ra­sol.

Mas­ter­card said through this part­ner­ship, it will re­in­force its com­mit­ment to the Caribbean by en­abling fin­tech, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, mer­chants, gov­ern­ments, and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) with the nec­es­sary tools, so­lu­tions, and re­sources to ac­cel­er­ate fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in the re­gion.

“We are ex­cit­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties that dig­i­tal pay­ments ac­cep­tance of­fers both busi­ness­es and the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties,” said Ji­me­na Elia, coun­try man­ag­er for Mas­ter­card’s West & Dutch Caribbean Mar­kets.

“Giv­ing small­er busi­ness­es new tech­nolo­gies has the po­ten­tial to ac­cel­er­ate more ro­bust, re­silient, and in­clu­sive eco­nom­ic growth in the Dutch Is­lands,” Elia said.

Gi­ra­sol is cur­rent­ly in­te­grat­ing and com­plet­ing the nec­es­sary cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to its sys­tems, and they are plan­ning to start of­fer­ing these new ser­vices (is­su­ing, ac­quir­ing, and pro­cess­ing) as a full 360 val­ue prop to its cus­tomers by Ju­ly.