The  Hous­ing  De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion is the first gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion to ful­ly of­fer a cash­less pay­ment op­tion for both the banked and un­banked, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre has an­nounced.

TTIFC CEO, John Out­ridge hailed the de­vel­op­ment.

“This is a very im­por­tant mile­stone for the TTIFC as we seek to push cash­less pay­ments to all of the gov­ern­ment. We have been  work­ing tire­less­ly be­hind the scenes with oth­er crit­i­cal stake­hold­ers, such as the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the  Cen­tral Bank of T&T, the T&T Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team, and oth­er min­istries, de­part­ments, and agen­cies that are all well-ad­vanced in their im­ple­men­ta­tions, to en­sure that the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal pay­ments reach the great­est num­ber of cit­i­zens. The HDC is a good place to start in this re­spect, as they have a grow­ing cus­tomer base of over 20, who will now have the added ben­e­fit of mul­ti­ple safe, se­cure,and con­ve­nient pay­ment op­tions for one of the most valu­able as­sets that any of us can own-a place to call home,” Out­ridge stat­ed.

The arrange­ment will al­low HDC cus­tomers to man­age their pay­ments for Li­cense to Oc­cu­py and/or Rent-to-Own ser­vices through on­line pay­ment chan­nels fa­cil­i­tat­ed by TSTT as well as the coun­try’s first e-Mon­ey Is­suer(EMI), Pay­Wise and oth­er pay­ment ser­vice  providers  across T&T, such as Sure­Pay.

The TTIFC al­so stat­ed in a re­lease that even more op­tions will be added in the fu­ture.

HDC’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane said, “This part­ner­ship be­tween the HDC and TTIFC is the per­fect ad­di­tion to our ‘More Ways to Pay’ ini­tia­tives as the HDC con­tin­ues to ful­fil our man­date of pro­vid­ing af­ford­able hous­ing and ex­plor­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide our cus­tomers  with  the  right  mix of  ser­vices  and  tools  to  help  them  to  pro­tect  and  main­tain  their home own­er­ship sta­tus.”

The HDC is ex­pect­ed to col­lab­o­rate with TTIFC to raise aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions among res­i­dents and renters in dif­fer­ent HDC com­mu­ni­ties and to en­cour­age them to adopt these so­lu­tions to make on-time rent or mort­gage pay­ments.
 Dawn Nel­son, Vice Pres­i­dent of Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Trans­for­ma­tion at TTIFC ex­plained that more gov­ern­ment agen­cies were ex­pect­ed to fol­low.

She said, “The Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion,the Ju­di­cia­ry, and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try are some of the gov­ern­ment min­istries, de­part­ments, and agen­cies with which we have been strate­gi­cal­ly and close­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with. These or­gan­i­sa­tions de­liv­er some of the most crit­i­cal ser­vices and are re­spon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing the largest vol­umes of pay­ments. These are just a few of the gov­ern­ment agen­cies with whom we are cur­rent­ly work­ing, which will soon be part of the cash­less  plat­form and  pro­vide safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty,and con­ve­nience to the cit­i­zens of T&T when do­ing busi­ness on­line with the state.”