Raphael John-Lall

Lec­tur­er in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Jan­ice John­son-Lorde who is al­so a busi­ness own­er, be­lieves that less cash should be used to con­duct busi­ness.

How­ev­er, she said while T&T should con­tin­ue to use less cash, a hy­brid sys­tem of dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems and tra­di­tion­al cash should be main­tained.

Swe­den is con­sid­ered one of the coun­tries in the world with a high num­ber of per­sons who use dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems and the tran­si­tion to a cash­less so­ci­ety ac­cel­er­at­ed when a group of banks in Swe­den cre­at­ed the mo­bile pay­ment app Swish in 2012. By 2017, Swe­den was us­ing less cash than oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, John­son-Lorde ar­gued that to­day, 80 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion live and sur­vive on 20 per cent of the wealth while the wealth­i­est 20 per cent of the peo­ple ac­cess 80 per cent of the wealth and so that there are some dis­ad­van­taged groups who would be left be­hind if T&T goes ful­ly cash­less.

She said Swe­den’s de­ci­sion to re­vis­it its dri­ve to­wards a cash­less so­ci­ety is an ex­am­ple of the fact that the world still is not ready for a ful­ly cash­less sys­tem.

She added that T&T, as a de­vel­op­ing na­tion, is way be­hind Swe­den and so is years away from im­ple­ment­ing a sys­tem like this.

“We are not in a place to be ful­ly con­vert­ed in­to a cash­less so­ci­ety at this time or any­time soon. This is based on T&T’s leg­isla­tive frame­work, pover­ty is­sues, and sev­er­al short­com­ings rel­a­tive to a de­vel­op­ing econ­o­my. Our re­search thus far shows that there is no econ­o­my that has been con­vert­ed in­to a ful­ly cash­less one. The po­si­tion of the de­baters on our side is that there have been coun­tries like Swe­den who went 90 per cent cash­less and re­cal­i­brat­ed their po­si­tion as they un­der­stood the im­pact of a ful­ly cash­less so­ci­ety.”

The T&T Cen­tral Bank has promised that this year it will roll out a sys­tem based on In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI) sys­tem, which will al­low users to make pay­ments us­ing their mo­bile phones. The UPI sys­tem is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and In­dia.

The de­baters who par­tic­i­pat­ed in di­a­logue that took place at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co­op­er­a­tive Stud­ies in Val­sayn are the lat­est stake­hold­ers to add voic­es to the grow­ing dis­cus­sion of T&T catch­ing up to the rest of the world in the use of more dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems

Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies was in­volved in a de­bate with the T&T Prison Ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 9 at the Col­lege Cam­pus in Val­sayn en­ti­tled “Be it re­solved that T&T be con­vert­ed to a ful­ly cash­less so­ci­ety.”

Sev­en stu­dents who rep­re­sent­ed the Col­lege took the stance that T&T should use less cash for busi­ness pur­pos­es but a hy­brid sys­tem of cash and dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems should con­tin­ue to be used.

The par­tic­i­pants from the T&T Prison Ser­vice ar­gued that T&T should move to­wards a ful­ly cash­less so­ci­ety.

The de­bate was part of theme of the T&T Prison Ser­vice’s week of Ret­ribu­tive Jus­tice Week and the first leg of the de­bate was held in No­vem­ber 2024 but with a dif­fer­ent theme.

LACK OF IN­FRA­STRUC­TURE

John­son-Lorde who summed up some of the points of the Col­lege’s de­bat­ing team said, that an im­por­tant sec­tion of T&T’s pop­u­la­tion is un­banked and this is a draw­back for some cit­i­zens who would want­to do on­line bank trans­fers and make use of dig­i­tal pay­ments.

She al­so spoke about the dig­i­tal di­vide in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries like T&T where some peo­ple do not have a smart­phone and ac­cess to a re­li­able in­ter­net ser­vice which are nec­es­sary to car­ry out cash­less and on­line fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions.

“We ar­gued on four points main­ly, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, af­ford­abil­i­ty and pover­ty. Our team high­light­ed that to go cash­less per­sons must have the ca­pac­i­ty to so do. If some­one does not have da­ta and WiFi how will that per­son go cash­less? We al­so raised the is­sue of if the sys­tem goes down what does a user do and what con­tin­gency is in place.”

She then re­ferred to a 2024 Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) re­port which showed that large part of T&T’s pop­u­la­tion is eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­pen­dent on oth­er work­ing per­sons and can­not take care of them­selves and so hav­ing the re­sources to car­ry out cash­less trans­ac­tions may not be pos­si­ble.

Al­so, da­ta from the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Sur­vey Re­port of 2023 shows that many SME’s (86 per­cent) do not ac­cept dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems.

“T&T’s pop­u­la­tion is 49 per cent de­pen­den­cy mean­ing they de­pend on oth­er per­sons to look af­ter their well­be­ing and wel­fare eco­nom­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise. This is a re­port from mid-year 2024 CSO of un­der those un­der 14 years and 65 years and old­er to­talling over 404,000 per­sons. Are we now ask­ing those per­sons to build their own ca­pac­i­ty to go cash­less? Then there is the Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Sur­vey Re­port of 2023 which the Col­lege’s de­baters cit­ed which shows that on­ly 14 per­cent of SME’s ac­cept cash­less pay­ments. That refers to the in­for­mal sec­tor from some­one who plants in a small gar­den and sells in front of their house to a dou­bles ven­dor. That’s is why we ar­gued for a hy­brid pay­ment sys­tem where per­sons can have the op­tion to use or not to use cash.”

She al­so raised the ques­tion of which sec­tor will ben­e­fit more from a cash­less so­ci­ety.

“Is it the small­er cit­i­zens or the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty? The big­ger busi­ness­es will ben­e­fit as they have own­er­ship of the soft­ware and cash in their bank. For small­er busi­ness­es or per­sons seek­ing to with­draw cash, there are with­draw­al lim­its at the ATM and they have to a fee if they with­draw over the counter at the banks.”

She said there is the threat of cy­ber­crimes which could neg­a­tive­ly af­fect those who use dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems and bank cards.

John­son-Lorde who has an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness and al­so op­er­ates a food busi­ness at the Ed­die Hart Food Vil­lage gave her ex­pe­ri­ence of Au­gust 2024 when she was the vic­tim of a crime with her bank cards be­ing stolen And she and made the point that if some­one’s bankcards are stolen, they must still have the al­ter­na­tive of us­ing cash.

“My cards were stolen from my car from the Ed­die Hart Food Vil­lage. It is a JMMB ac­count and they tapped my card of $17, 276 and a to­tal of 72 trans­ac­tions. There was no way of pro­tect­ing my funds since JMMB is ac­ces­si­ble on­ly Mon­day to Fri­day be­tween the hours of 8:00am to 5:00pm. They al­so tapped my Re­pub­lic Bank ac­count and the three trans­ac­tions failed be­cause Re­pub­lic Bank was ac­ces­si­ble and shut the card down. Now pic­ture the trau­ma and the mat­ter is still in the hands of the po­lice. I had to get down to Ari­api­ta Av­enue to one of the busi­ness­es where they got the no­ti­fi­ca­tions where they tapped the JMMB card and I se­cured footage of the per­pe­tra­tors. How many per­sons have the where­with­al to do that? We can’t make laws that favour cer­tain stra­ta in so­ci­ety.”

Fi­nal­ly, she al­so spoke about the im­por­tance of fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion for those un­der­priv­i­leged mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

“You still have a peo­ple in a com­mu­ni­ty that do not have bank ac­counts and trust banks. There are some re­li­gious groups who do not trust the fi­nan­cial sys­tem. You can­not take away the op­tion of pur­chas­ing. There are some per­sons who do not have bank cards and do not have that means. Then we al­so have the dis­placed who de­pend on hand­outs, do they have cash­less op­tions? Sys­tems must in­clu­sive and so, fa­cil­i­tate the needs of all.”