Con­nect­ing pas­sion and peo­ple is the mantra be­hind Mas­ter­card’s part­ner­ship with Car­ni­val pi­o­neer, Tribe.

The in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-recog­nised tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny joined yet again, with the pop­u­lar mas band to con­tin­ue its ven­ture in­to T&T’s mu­sic and cul­tur­al sphere.

More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, it rep­re­sents Mas­ter­card’s over­ar­ch­ing thrust to en­able T&T to be­come more of a cash­less so­ci­ety and im­prove its dig­i­tal pay­ments land­scape.

As part of its Car­ni­val pro­mo­tion, this week Mas­ter­card card­hold­ers reg­is­tered in Bliss, Tribe, Harts, or Red Ants can re­ceive ex­clu­sive ben­e­fits such as VIP/fast track lanes at se­lect cos­tume col­lec­tion days and spe­cial spot give­aways.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, card­hold­ers and non-card­hold­ers will al­so be a part of “Mas­ter­card mo­ments” this week, which will in­clude sur­prise/pop-up give­aways of a chance to be on the road with Bliss, Tribe, Harts or Red Ants, fête tick­ets and more.

Ac­cord­ing to Danielle Du­mas, Di­rec­tor of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at Mas­ter­card, pas­sion is that in­gre­di­ent that en­ables the com­pa­ny to build an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with its clients.

“Glob­al­ly, we are rein­vent­ing how we con­nect card­hold­ers to their pas­sions through tai­lored mul­ti­sen­so­ry ex­pe­ri­ences that en­able them to do more of what they love,” she ex­plained to the Busi­ness Guardian, adding that Mas­ter­card wants to am­pli­fy in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries and build on card­hold­ers’ con­nec­tions in­clud­ing mu­sic and cul­ture and how it dri­ves their de­sire to be part of some­thing big­ger.

“We ul­ti­mate­ly want to fu­el their de­sire for un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ences,” Du­mas added.

This is not the first time the com­pa­ny joined with Tribe.

In Ju­ly 2022 Mas­ter­card spon­sored the band’s Sun­set Week­end which rep­re­sent­ed a con­dens­ing of Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ences in­to three days.

“Mu­sic and cul­ture are a big part of the fab­ric of Mas­ter­card and Tribe per­fect­ly aligns with our brand promise,” Du­mas re­it­er­at­ed.

These ini­tia­tives are mir­rored through­out the Caribbean with sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives that com­bine cul­ture and pas­sions such as mu­sic, gas­tron­o­my and sports; pri­mar­i­ly through ma­jor spon­sor­ships and cam­paigns that dri­ve con­sumers to re­deem ex­clu­sive ben­e­fits, as Mas­ter­card card­hold­ers.

Some of these in­clude for ex­am­ple Ja­maica Reg­gae Sum­fest, Puer­to Ri­co Jazz Fes­ti­val. In Ja­maica and Puer­to Ri­co Mas­ter­card al­so part­nered with gas­tron­o­my events, and in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic it spon­sored dif­fer­ent mu­si­cal per­for­mances such as the Bad Bun­ny con­cert.

Move to­wards a cash­less so­ci­ety

Ac­cord­ing to Du­mas, 50 per cent of the peo­ple in the Caribbean are ei­ther un­banked or un­der­banked.

Mas­ter­card’s in­vest­ments in ma­jor events and ac­tiv­i­ties such as Car­ni­val will, there­fore, help raise aware­ness about the ben­e­fits of “cash­less” and sup­port the dri­ve to­ward, and ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy-based pay­ment so­lu­tions.

“A lot of peo­ple think that cash is easy but they don’t think about the cost of cash. There are safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. Al­so, there’s the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“For in­stance, if you want to pay for some­thing that’s $1,000 do you re­al­ly want to walk around with that cash ver­sus a card?...and con­nect­ing peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly to things you get them on board with the way the world is go­ing...so when you con­nect pas­sion with pay­ment it makes it eas­i­er for peo­ple to adopt so when you con­nect re­wards for in­stance, if Tribe was to come out with a ‘Pas­sion Card’ some­thing that is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to your pas­sions and you get re­wards more of the un­banked pop­u­la­tion will feel safer us­ing this be­cause they are get­ting some val­ue for us­ing it,” Du­mas fur­ther ex­plained.

While cards have been the back­bone of Mas­ter­card’s busi­ness for decades and re­main crit­i­cal to­day, it of­fers op­tions to con­tin­ue to im­prove the dig­i­tal pay­ment land­scape in T&T.

Hence, Mas­ter­card can con­nect any pay­er to pay­ees, re­gard­less of whether the par­ties are us­ing cards, bank ac­counts, mo­bile wal­lets, or oth­er forms of pay­ment.

The com­pa­ny al­so wants to in­crease the ac­cep­tance of e-com­merce and con­tact­less pay­ments in the is­lands by con­tin­u­ing to make deep in­vest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and valu­able part­ner­ships across the ecosys­tem, both with tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and Fin­tech up-and-com­ers.

It not­ed these in­no­va­tions are un­der­pinned by its re­silient and se­cure net­work and bol­stered by ser­vices that bring per­son­alised ex­pe­ri­ences and more peace of mind to con­sumers and busi­ness­es.

On the grant­i­ng of pro­vi­sion­al li­cens­es by the Cen­tral Bank to three com­pa­nies to con­duct e-mon­ey trans­ac­tions Mas­ter­card has en­dorsed the move.

The bank is­sued pro­vi­sion­al reg­is­tra­tions to two ad­di­tion­al com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and PESH Mon­ey Ltd (PESH), to cov­er an ini­tial six-month pe­ri­od and au­tho­rised the two com­pa­nies to is­sue e-mon­ey from March 1, 2023.

Pay­Wise was grant­ed pro­vi­sion­al reg­is­tra­tion on Sep­tem­ber 1, last year.

Ac­cord­ing to Du­mas, it showed that the coun­try’s reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment is evolv­ing to­wards more in­no­va­tion, adding that Mas­ter­card al­so wants to grow its Fin­tech part­ner­ships as it con­tin­ues on its own path of de­vel­op­ment.

She al­so not­ed that reg­u­la­tors in the re­gion are be­gin­ning to un­der­stand that to achieve dig­i­tal in­clu­sion, it’s im­por­tant not just to cre­ate the frame­work but lo­cal ex­per­tise must be de­vel­oped.

“As such, we have been lever­ag­ing our glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence with the coun­tries that have suc­cess­ful Fin­tech part­ner­ships and as part of our thought lead­er­ship we in­tend to en­gage with the Cen­tral Bank to lever­age that knowl­edge and pass that knowl­edge on to them,” Du­mas added.

When Fin­tech suc­ceeds, she said the pop­u­la­tion, by ex­ten­sion, will al­so ben­e­fit, not­ing that peo­ple are the adopters of the pay­ments.

“Giv­ing more ac­cess be­yond fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions through this Fin­tech will en­able wider ac­cep­tance of cards,” she added.

Al­though best known for cred­it cards, the com­pa­ny of­fers a mul­ti-rail ap­proach to tech­nol­o­gy that al­lows it to look at pay­ments across all the rails.

Mas­ter­card is now part­ner­ing with banks and fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies with­in the re­gion to do cross-bor­der pay­ments.

An­oth­er im­por­tant area of fo­cus will be cross-bor­der ser­vices, to max­imise ef­fi­cien­cies of low-val­ue pay­ments through a sin­gle, se­cure con­nec­tion, such as B2P which in­clude cross-bor­der fam­i­ly sup­port, per­son­al sav­ings, gift­ing, salaries and pay­roll, free­lance pay­ments, in­sur­ance claims pen­sions, tu­ition, trav­el fees, med­ical bills as well as B2B ser­vices like SME glob­al trade, in­voice pay­ments and de­vel­op­ment aid.