In Ju­ly, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Bri­an Man­ning, de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at the launch of One Fin­Tech Av­enue at the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre.

In his ad­dress, he iden­ti­fied the ben­e­fits and ob­sta­cles of a fin­tech fu­ture and how adopt­ing fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy will help con­sumers and busi­ness­es.

I am very pleased to be here to­day to for­mal­ly open this fa­cil­i­ty—One Fin­Tech Av­enue—which will be re­gard­ed as the start­ing point and gate­way for fin­tech in­no­va­tion in the Caribbean, this cen­tre will al­so be the first of its kind in the Caribbean.

This is cer­tain­ly a huge mile­stone for T&T as we seek to take our place along­side oth­er glob­al­ly recog­nised ju­ris­dic­tions such as Lux­em­bourg, Sin­ga­pore, and the UK for ad­vanc­ing the fin­tech sec­tor and as a hub for the growth of in­clu­sive dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices for the rest of the re­gion.

The Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Fi­nance, is deeply in­vest­ed in ef­forts to mod­ernise our fi­nan­cial sec­tor and sup­ports the dri­ve to­wards achiev­ing more ac­cep­tance for dig­i­tal pay­ment prod­ucts and ser­vices.

T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-third of to­tal fi­nan­cial as­sets in the re­gion, to­day’s launch un­der­scores the coun­try’s goal to pre­serve its po­si­tion as hav­ing one of the largest and most di­ver­si­fied fi­nan­cial sys­tems in the Caribbean. This goal is premised on the sec­tor’s in­ter­con­nec­tion with the rest of the Caribbean, which is cru­cial for a ro­bust ecosys­tem of dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor ac­counts for sev­er­al TT-based banks and in­sur­ance con­glom­er­ates ac­tive­ly op­er­at­ing across the re­gion and with this strong foun­da­tion, T&T is the per­fect ju­ris­dic­tion for fin­tech start-ups that are seek­ing to build ca­pa­bil­i­ties up­on tra­di­tion­al fi­nance.

One of the fo­cal points of the na­tion­al bud­get for 2022 was the cre­ation of a fin­tech-en­abled Hub in T&T. This was an ini­tia­tive charged to the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre—TTIFC, the lead agency un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance for dri­ving the adop­tion of dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices across the pub­lic sec­tor.

Fin­tech in­no­va­tion hubs ex­ist in nu­mer­ous glob­al ju­ris­dic­tions, the ma­jor­i­ty can be found in ad­vanced economies or emerg­ing economies near­ing ad­vanced econ­o­my sta­tus such as our­selves. It is known that fi­nan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion has pos­i­tive ef­fects on economies. The fin­tech sec­tor, which has gained sig­nif­i­cant mo­men­tum re­cent­ly and is re­lat­ed to fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, is al­so con­sid­ered the en­gine of dig­i­tal fi­nance.

A re­port pub­lished by the McK­in­sey Glob­al In­sti­tute sup­ports this view. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, it is es­ti­mat­ed that by 2025, dig­i­tal fi­nance has the po­ten­tial to boost the GDP of de­vel­op­ing economies by six per cent, or up to US$3.7 tril­lion.

In T&T, many con­sumers and busi­ness­es still face chal­lenges when try­ing to adopt and use dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial prod­ucts, in par­tic­u­lar pay­ment prod­ucts, and, as a re­sult, pri­mar­i­ly op­er­ate in cash.

This is a chal­lenge not on­ly here at home but across many emerg­ing economies across the world. Glob­al Find­ex da­ta shows that 29 per cent of un­banked peo­ple choose not to use bank­ing ser­vices be­cause they lack con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion. There are a num­ber of ad­di­tion­al ob­sta­cles to the adop­tion and use of dig­i­tal pay­ments as well as the rate of fi­nan­cial ex­clu­sion, which can be seen in a va­ri­ety of prob­lems with ac­cess to or main­te­nance of bank ac­counts, ac­qui­si­tion of dig­i­tal pay­ment ac­cep­tance prod­ucts, own­er­ship and use of cred­it and deb­it cards as well as oth­er dig­i­tal pay­ment modal­i­ties.

This re­stricts ac­cess to fi­nance as well as fur­ther re­strict­ed ac­cess to larg­er do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. The TTIFC is at present work­ing to gath­er up­dat­ed da­ta and in­sights that will as­sist the Min­istry of Fi­nance to bet­ter un­der­stand the bar­ri­ers that con­tribute to the rate of fi­nan­cial ex­clu­sion cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T, through its Dig­i­tal Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Study which is well un­der­way.

It is my hope that with these in­sights, the Gov­ern­ment can de­vel­op ini­tia­tives to in­crease the us­age of dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices and in­crease the par­tic­i­pa­tion of cit­i­zens in the for­mal econ­o­my.

What we do know is that the sys­temic im­por­tance of fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and dig­i­tal fi­nance in­te­gra­tion is in­ter­wo­ven across var­i­ous pol­i­cy do­mains, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture, health­care, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy, and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. Fin­tech holds much promise for achiev­ing pol­i­cy goals and po­si­tion­ing our coun­try as a hub for in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers seek­ing to op­er­ate across the Caribbean and the Amer­i­c­as.

That said, do­mes­ti­cal­ly T&T is primed for fin­tech in­no­va­tion, with sol­id foun­da­tions for mo­bile and in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, as well as a ro­bust pay­ment en­vi­ron­ment.

Scal­ing fin­tech in T&T can help over­come the prob­lems men­tioned and has proven suc­cess­ful in in­creas­ing in­clu­sion glob­al­ly. With this view in mind, we an­tic­i­pate that through this ini­tia­tive, dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices will be­come more preva­lent in the mar­ket, and will ben­e­fit stake­hold­ers such as:

Cit­i­zens, who will be pro­vid­ed with safer and eas­i­er op­tions to make pur­chas­es and the abil­i­ty to build their cred­it his­to­ry which can lead to en­joy­ing the ben­e­fits of be­ing part of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem;

Mi­cro, Small, and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es, will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­crease their sales and fa­cil­i­tate safe­ty for their cus­tomers by han­dling less cash;

Gov­ern­ment, which will al­low for the in­crease of the ease of do­ing busi­ness and in­crease lev­els of trans­paren­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy in gov­ern­ment process­es and ser­vices whilst en­abling the pri­vate sec­tor en­vi­ron­ment.

Fin­tech cen­tres around the world of­fer ser­vices com­pa­ra­ble to those to be of­fered by this fa­cil­i­ty and at­tract some of the biggest names in Fin­Tech and ecom­merce.

For ex­am­ple, The Lux­em­bourg House for Fi­nan­cial Tech­nol­o­gy, or LHoFT, has long been a pop­u­lar lo­ca­tion for top e-com­merce and e-pay­ment providers such as Pay­Pal, Ama­zon, and Rakuten. Via the LHoFT, a com­bi­na­tion of 26 fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and e-mon­ey in­sti­tu­tions with­in the EU have ad­vanced their dig­i­tal pay­ments so­lu­tions.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Sin­ga­pore Fin­Tech As­so­ci­a­tion en­ables ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, fi­nanc­ing ac­cess, and com­pli­ance sup­port for en­ti­ties with­in the Asia-pa­cif­ic re­gion.

Both the LHoFT and the Sin­ga­pore Fin­Tech As­so­ci­a­tion are ex­am­ples of sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ties that have played cru­cial roles in fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and growth in the fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor.

They have helped to cre­ate a sup­port­ive ecosys­tem that en­cour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tion, knowl­edge shar­ing, and in­vest­ment in new tech­nolo­gies.

T&T’s One Fin­Tech Av­enue will utilise a sim­i­lar in­no­va­tion fa­cil­i­ta­tor strat­e­gy, which, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, is best suit­ed for pol­i­cy­mak­ers and reg­u­la­tors to in­ter­act ac­tive­ly with fin­tech in or­der to strength­en risk man­age­ment and analyse cur­rent­ly ap­plic­a­ble rules that will pro­vide start-ups with easy ac­cess to the ex­per­tise need­ed to build their prod­ucts se­cure­ly and re­spon­si­bly in ac­cor­dance with the ap­plic­a­ble reg­u­la­tions.

Fi­nal­ly, it will seek to es­tab­lish a clear frame­work to as­sist in­no­v­a­tive en­tre­pre­neurs and es­tab­lish fin­tech in de­vel­op­ing their op­er­a­tions, test­ing and op­er­at­ing fin­tech so­lu­tions in T&T, and scal­ing their so­lu­tions for the glob­al mar­ket.

Over the last three years, T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor has un­der­tak­en tremen­dous strides in up­grad­ing the mar­ket pay­ments in­fra­struc­ture, which pro­vides the foun­da­tion for Fin­Tech to build and scale their busi­ness­es.

The mi­gra­tion of the lo­cal LINX magstripe cards across all lo­cal com­mer­cial banks to Visa’s con­tact­less cre­den­tials has en­abled:

Con­sumers with ca­pa­bil­i­ties to shop do­mes­ti­cal­ly on­line via lo­cal ecom­merce sites;

Card­hold­ers to en­joy fast and se­cure trans­ac­tions with tap-and-pay fa­cil­i­ties and;

E-pay­ment cre­den­tials which can be loaded to lo­cal e-wal­lets and e-Mon­ey Is­suers op­er­at­ing with­in the mar­ket.

As the largest mer­chant and con­sumer of elec­tron­ic pay­ments, the gov­ern­ment has al­so con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to spark­ing the in­dus­try and fos­ter­ing in­ter­est in dig­i­tal pay­ment tech­nolo­gies.

One of the Gov­ern­ment’s top pri­or­i­ties is dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and through the Min­istry of Fi­nance, re­ceivers of rev­enue are be­ing urged to speed up their dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of pay­ment ef­forts and adop­tion of dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial prod­ucts to im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery.

An ex­am­ple of this is through the TTIFC’s co­or­di­na­tion ef­forts of sev­er­al Min­istries, Di­vi­sions, and Agen­cies (MDAs) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion to bring to mar­ket use cas­es such as the HDC’s om­nichan­nel pay­ment plat­form for res­i­dents to con­ve­nient­ly make pay­ments via cash agents, on­line deb­it and cred­it cards, the Ju­di­cia­ry’s ex­pan­sion of its Court Pay plat­form in­to the NL­CB’s net­work of over 1,700 cash agents to al­low for any ser­vice of the courts to be trans­act­ed across T&T and the Min­istry of Trade’s Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow, which will be de­ployed in the com­ing weeks.

These are just a few of the use cas­es be­ing ac­cel­er­at­ed and all of which would have ben­e­fit­ed through the use of fin­tech. The gov­ern­ment has al­so pri­ori­tised reg­u­la­tions that sup­port the lo­cal fin­tech sec­tor.

The elec­tron­ic mon­ey is­suer or (EMI) or­der gives non-fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions a path to­wards is­su­ing pay­ment cre­den­tials, which has pushed lo­cal tal­ent, cap­i­tal, busi­ness­es, and fin­tech to fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ment so­lu­tions. This cre­ates a strong foun­da­tion to ac­cel­er­ate in­no­va­tion and fi­nan­cial/dig­i­tal in­clu­sion in the com­ing years. At present, the Cen­tral Bank has is­sued three of these li­cens­es to lo­cal play­ers and we an­tic­i­pate more in the fu­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so con­tin­ues to place a high pri­or­i­ty on cul­ti­vat­ing ben­e­fi­cial, strate­gic part­ner­ships in or­der to ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for the de­vel­op­ment of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try in the coun­try.

This fa­cil­i­ty as an ex­am­ple was en­abled and aid­ed by both in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor part­ners who un­der­stood the vi­sion for T&T and in­vest­ed ful­ly in that vi­sion with no costs be­ing borne by the state to bring this fa­cil­i­ty to re­al­i­ty.