First Cit­i­zens yes­ter­day an­nounced that it has rolled out Google Pay in T&T, mak­ing this the first time the mo­bile pay­ment ser­vice is avail­able lo­cal­ly.

The bank said the move is part of its wider push to ex­pand dig­i­tal bank­ing op­tions for its cus­tomers.

With the in­tro­duc­tion of the ser­vice, First Cit­i­zens in­di­cat­ed that cred­it card hold­ers can now use Google Pay to make con­tact­less pay­ments through An­droid phones and oth­er com­pat­i­ble smart de­vices.

“It al­lows cus­tomers to load their First Cit­i­zens cred­it or pre­paid cards in­to a dig­i­tal wal­let and tap to pay in stores, on apps or on­line.”

The Group’s CEO, Ja­son Julien, said the in­tro­duc­tion of Google Pay comes as cus­tomers in­creas­ing­ly use dig­i­tal chan­nels and ex­pect faster, low-fric­tion trans­ac­tions. He not­ed that the bank sees the plat­form as a log­i­cal step in the coun­try’s shift to­ward more mod­ern pay­ment sys­tems.

The re­lease not­ed that mer­chants can al­so ac­cept Google Pay trans­ac­tions once they have the re­quired con­tact­less ter­mi­nals.

The bank said this is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er quick­er check­out times and an added lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty for both busi­ness­es and cus­tomers.

Google Pay’s launch comes as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions con­tin­ue to push mo­bile-based pay­ment op­tions, sig­nalling a grad­ual tran­si­tion away from phys­i­cal cards to­ward phone-based trans­ac­tions.

First Cit­i­zens said the tool of­fers en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and is de­signed to give cus­tomers greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in how they pay as dig­i­tal habits con­tin­ue to evolve.

Julien added that the bank views the shift as part of an on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion of every­day bank­ing, as more cus­tomers pre­fer to com­plete trans­ac­tions through their de­vices rather than tra­di­tion­al meth­ods.