Dig­i­tal pay­ments are pick­ing up mo­men­tum in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, but com­par­a­tive­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go is still rel­a­tive­ly slow to par­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to re­search done by Mas­ter­card on pay­ment meth­ods of choice in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the re­gion is still look­ing to­wards cards as the most promi­nent cash­less op­tion.

In the da­ta pre­sent­ed at the LAC In­no­va­tion Fo­rum 2023, cards were the most wide­ly used dig­i­tal pay­ment method with 80 per cent of con­sumers us­ing them, ei­ther on­line or in-store, with deb­it cards tak­ing top rank as the most re­li­able dig­i­tal pay­ment method, with 55 per cent of con­sumers per­ceiv­ing them as very se­cure.

Mas­ter­card’s re­search was based on pay­ment be­hav­iours of con­sumers in 14 coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The study mar­kets in­clud­ed Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Pe­ru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colom­bia, Pana­ma, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Mex­i­co, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ja­maica and Puer­to Ri­co. The re­search took place be­tween No­vem­ber 1, 2023 and No­vem­ber 19, 2023 and con­sist­ed of a sur­vey of 9,489 adults aged 18 and over.

Ac­cord­ing to the main find­ings, over the past few years, the use of var­i­ous al­ter­na­tive pay­ment meth­ods has in­creased with 77 per cent of the con­sumers in the re­gion hav­ing used elec­tron­ic pay­ments, with cred­it and deb­it be­ing the most utilised pay­ment in­stru­ments both on­line and in-store. Deb­it has been high­light­ed as the most im­por­tant dig­i­tal pay­ment method, used by 63 per cent of con­sumers, the re­port stat­ed.

“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca is a phe­nom­e­non that is here to stay, as it is pre­sent­ed as a so­lu­tion to the needs that Latin Amer­i­cans face every day. Mas­ter­card has been known for be­ing at the fore­front of the most cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy trends and that in­cludes in­no­vat­ing at the pace of con­sumers. New pay­ment meth­ods have be­come tools that fa­cil­i­tate pay­ments and trans­fers, which is why Mas­ter­card has part­nered with sev­er­al dig­i­tal wal­lets in var­i­ous mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean with the aim of pro­vid­ing the best pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ence to all con­sumers,” said Wal­ter Pi­men­ta, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Prod­ucts and En­gi­neer­ing for Mas­ter­card Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

How­ev­er, the pic­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a bit dif­fer­ent.

On Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­vealed sta­tis­tics from a sur­vey done this year by Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre while speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Strat­e­gy Stake­hold­er Con­sul­ta­tion Work­shop. The sur­vey start­ed in May and end­ed in Au­gust. The sur­vey ques­tioned about 2,000 house­holds across the 14 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties in Trinidad as well as To­ba­go.

He re­vealed that ac­cord­ing to that sur­vey, cash was still very much to dom­i­nant pay­ment op­tion in the coun­try.

“Mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide still re­ly heav­i­ly on cash; some are bat­tling to hold on­to it. This is the same for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as cash is still heav­i­ly re­lied up­on, par­tic­u­lar­ly for low-val­ue, high-vol­ume trans­ac­tions,” he said.

“The use of elec­tron­ic pay­ments is still low, with the to­tal per­cent­age of gen­er­al trans­ac­tions us­ing the fol­low­ing pay­ment meth­ods as fol­lows, among oth­ers: cash 63 per cent; deb­it card 12 per cent; cred­it card 3 per cent; and on­line/mo­bile bank­ing 2 per cent; cheques, over-the-counter trans­ac­tions, etc, 20 per cent.”

Im­bert al­so not­ed that there is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of busi­ness­es which did not sup­port dig­i­tal op­tions in the coun­try.

He said, “On the sup­ply side, the per­va­sive­ness of dig­i­tal pay­ments with­in mi­cro firms is min­i­mal, as 86 per cent of these busi­ness­es do not use dig­i­tal in­stru­ments with­in their op­er­a­tions. The Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion fo­cus group da­ta high­light­ed some sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cles that are de­lay­ing adop­tion and use.”

He con­tin­ued, “As a coun­try, we have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to change views about the ben­e­fits of a cash­less so­ci­ety giv­en the cur­rent con­di­tions. Al­though sev­er­al peo­ple still have reser­va­tions about it, tran­si­tion­ing to a cash­less econ­o­my can in­crease Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion by mak­ing bank­ing and fi­nan­cial ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said im­prov­ing dig­i­tal op­tions would con­tin­ue to be a fo­cus, as it would in­crease fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in the coun­try. Dur­ing his speech at the work­shop, the Min­is­ter said he planned to in­crease e-mon­ey wal­let sizes and trans­ac­tion lim­its to fa­cil­i­tate and en­cour­age the use of elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions.

No­tably of the coun­tries sur­veyed by Mas­ter­card, an­oth­er Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­try Ja­maica, saw low dig­i­tal pen­e­tra­tion in terms of pay­ment.

Mas­ter­card’s sur­vey not­ed the re­gion has be­come more open to test­ing new pay­ment meth­ods and with the adop­tion of elec­tron­ic pay­ment meth­ods, cash us­age has de­creased with cards be­com­ing the pre­ferred medi­um amongst grow­ing num­bers of al­ter­na­tive dig­i­tal meth­ods. Chile is the coun­try with the high­est pen­e­tra­tion of deb­it cards, both in-store (82 per cent) and on­line (72 per cent).

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, 50 per cent of con­sumers in­di­cate that the adop­tion of elec­tron­ic pay­ments is mo­ti­vat­ed by re­duc­ing the use of cash. The sec­ond rea­son, with 45 per cent, is due to the speed of the trans­ac­tion. Ar­genti­na led the way in terms of go­ing cash­less, with 60 per cent of Ar­gen­tin­ian users car­ry­ing less phys­i­cal mon­ey with them.

Mas­ter­card’s re­port not­ed as new pay­ment meth­ods have in­creased, con­sumers pre­fer dig­i­tal wal­lets when mak­ing a pur­chase in a store due to con­ve­nience (45 per cent), speed (44 per cent), and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty/user ex­pe­ri­ence (44 per cent).

Two-thirds of con­sumers use dig­i­tal wal­lets for on­line or in-store trans­ac­tions. The coun­tries in the sur­vey that made the high­est use of this type of pay­ment were Ar­genti­na and Uruguay, where more than 80 per cent of con­sumers have used it.

Dig­i­tal wal­lets ap­pealed to young adults, even more so when it comes to mak­ing on­line pay­ments. Forty-four per cent of con­sumers be­tween the ages of 18 and 30 cit­ed con­ve­nience as the top fac­tor dri­ving their on­line pay­ment pref­er­ences, Mas­ter­card’s sur­vey point­ed out that of those sur­veyed 44 per cent of con­sumers use a mo­bile de­vice to per­form a trans­ac­tion. The coun­try where these de­vices are most used for pay­ments is Brazil (86 per cent), while in Ja­maica it is the op­po­site, where this type of pay­ment has not been im­ple­ment­ed for the most part (13 per cent).

Se­cu­ri­ty was seen as the main dri­ver of the in­creased use of cards.

The re­port not­ed, “Se­cu­ri­ty—and specif­i­cal­ly the fear of fraud—is the main fac­tor that de­ter­mines con­sumer be­hav­iour in re­la­tion to the pay­ment meth­ods they use. In fact, 83 per cent of Latin Amer­i­cans in­di­cat­ed that se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures are the most in­flu­en­tial as­pect when choos­ing which pay­ment method to use, fol­lowed by the pro­tec­tion of con­sumer fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion at 79 per cent.”

This was es­pe­cial­ly a con­cern giv­en the rise in cy­ber­at­tacks around the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to re­spon­dents, deb­it cards are the pay­ment method they ful­ly trust (36 per cent), fol­lowed by bank trans­fer (34 per cent) and cred­it cards (27 per cent). In this case, Uruguayan re­spon­dents stand out, who with 67 per cent are the ones who feel the safest when mak­ing trans­ac­tions with their deb­it cards, while Colom­bians are the ones who find them less se­cure (11 per cent).

“We know that cy­ber­at­tacks are a grow­ing con­cern in the Latin Amer­i­can re­gion for all con­sumers. Peo­ple de­serve the abil­i­ty to make pay­ments con­ve­nient­ly, quick­ly and eas­i­ly with­out com­pro­mis­ing their se­cu­ri­ty. That’s why Mas­ter­card is con­tin­u­ous­ly tak­ing the nec­es­sary ac­tions to strength­en the pro­tec­tion of our con­sumers through a holis­tic cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. To en­sure a se­cure dig­i­tal ecosys­tem, we use da­ta an­a­lyt­ics and AI to iden­ti­fy vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in ad­vance and ac­ti­vate au­to­mat­ic pro­tec­tion shields for all our con­sumers,” said Pi­men­ta.

Pri­va­cy al­so is con­sid­ered a high pri­or­i­ty, with con­sumers in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­port­ed to be high­ly con­cerned about their da­ta pri­va­cy in the world of dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions, where 73 per cent of re­spon­dents said pri­va­cy is a top pri­or­i­ty, and that they al­ways choose pay­ment meth­ods that pro­tect user da­ta.