Some 50 Car­ni­val ven­dors op­er­at­ing in the Fla­va Vil­lage for the 2026 sea­son were able to ex­pand their busi­ness af­ter they re­ceived free, mod­ern point-of-sale (POS) ter­mi­nals from the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPICTT).

Those ter­mi­nals al­lowed the ven­dors to ac­cept deb­it and cred­it card pay­ments in ad­di­tion to cash.

In to­tal, NPICTT cal­cu­lates the 50 ven­dors used their ter­mi­nals to to col­lect pay­ments to­talling $250,000, said Dr Nigel Fulchan, the chair­man of the state agency that is re­spon­si­ble for ad­vanc­ing dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions and in­no­va­tion with­in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.

"One of the things that we were par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased about is that the ven­dors had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use point-of-sales ter­mi­nals to col­lect pay­ments for the first time," said Fulchan.

He said the abil­i­ty of the ven­dors to use the POS ter­mi­nals al­lowed them to process trans­ac­tions quick­er, re­duced the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with han­dling cash and im­proved the con­ve­nience for both ven­dors and pa­trons at­tend­ing the Car­ni­val Cen­tre, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods.

Fulchan al­so said the ter­mi­nals al­so demon­strat­ed progress in fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, which is a term used to de­fine in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es hav­ing ac­cess to af­ford­able, use­ful, and re­spon­si­ble fi­nan­cial ser­vices, en­abling eco­nom­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion and re­silience.

NPICTT part­nered with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion in iden­ti­fy­ing and on­board­ing ven­dors op­er­at­ing with­in the Car­ni­val Cen­tre.

NPICTT was es­tab­lished in Au­gust last year as a sig­nif­i­cant part of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion's dri­ve to mod­ernise and stream­line the col­lec­tion and dis­burse­ment of gov­ern­ment pay­ment, by en­hanc­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy for cit­i­zens.

On its web­site, NPICTT says the com­pa­ny is "com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where op­por­tu­ni­ty is not lim­it­ed by lo­ca­tion, in­come lev­el, or ac­cess bar­ri­ers, ul­ti­mate­ly shap­ing a more re­silient and in­clu­sive Trinidad and To­ba­go."