Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

Re­port­ing from Mi­a­mi

An­drea Scerch, pres­i­dent of Mas­ter­card's Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC) says fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion re­mains im­por­tant for coun­tries in re­gion, not­ing that while some progress has been made there is still some work to do.

Speak­ing on day one of the 13th edi­tion of the Mas­ter­card In­no­va­tion Fo­rum, which is tak­ing place at the Fontainebleau Ho­tel in Mi­a­mi, Scerch stressed that hav­ing bet­ter ac­cess to tools means get­ting clos­er to cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal econ­o­my that works for every­one.

He ex­plained that mea­sures like deb­it cards for in­stance, re­main im­por­tant, but are not enough.

"We need to al­so fo­cus on us­age," he said as he em­pha­sised that ac­cep­tance is crit­i­cal in this re­gard.

Re­gard­ing the is­sue of ac­cep­tance, Scerch ex­plained it is not enough for con­sumers to do their every day spend­ing us­ing on­ly a deb­it card. He said cre­at­ing so­lu­tions for con­sumers to have more choice is al­so im­por­tant as this en­ables them to make pay­ments in any way they can see fit.

Con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ence, he added, is an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor as well as cre­at­ing con­fi­dence in en­abling fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion.

Scerch fur­ther not­ed that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is al­so at the fore­front of fu­ture de­vel­op­ment, stat­ing that the need to have cut­ting-edge pay­ment so­lu­tions is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly more im­por­tant.

Mas­ter­card as a glob­al pay­ment out­fit, as part of its thrust for greater growth and ex­pan­sion in the coun­tries it serves, has al­ready sin­gled out dig­i­tal wal­lets, re­al time pay­ment (RTP) in­fra­struc­ture, and eco­nom­ic so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) sus­tain­abil­i­ty among its three main ar­eas of fo­cus for the fu­ture.

Ed McLaugh­lin, Mas­ter­card's Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Of­fi­cer al­so not­ed that through­out the LAC re­gion there is more switch­ing on the Mas­ter­card net­work as he said trust is not just about re­li­a­bil­i­ty but in to­day's world peo­ple want "in­stant."

"Every­one loves get­ting their mon­ey faster and the abil­i­ty to move that through the sys­tem," he said.

McLaugh­lin al­so em­pha­sised that chang­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions, ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, evolv­ing reg­u­la­to­ry land­scapes, and the grow­ing im­per­a­tive for fraud pre­ven­tion are dri­ving the next wave of pay­ment in­no­va­tion.

Hand-in-hand with trust, he added, is se­cu­ri­ty which he said is some­times un­der at­tack from cy­ber crim­i­nals.

He said it is not on­ly at­tacks on the sys­tem but through the sys­tem like fraud which is a chal­lenge.

How­ev­er, McLaugh­lin as­sured that Mas­ter­card con­tin­ues to up­grade and ad­vance its sys­tems to safe­guard against at­tacks.

This year marks the 13th edi­tion of the In­no­va­tion Fo­rum, high­light­ing Mas­ter­card's role as a lead­ing in­no­va­tor in the in­dus­try.

To strength­en this po­si­tion and sup­port a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, Mas­ter­card's nar­ra­tive fo­cuss­es on the on­go­ing shift to dig­i­tal.

Dis­cus­sions al­so fo­cused on many of these ad­vances which have the pow­er to bring more peo­ple in­to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, re­duc­ing the need for cash in a sim­ple, safe, and smart way, and en­abling the re­gion's un­der­banked pop­u­la­tion to par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al econ­o­my.

The an­nu­al flag­ship cus­tomer event brings to­geth­er lead­ing ex­perts in fi­nance, in­no­va­tion, and tech­nol­o­gy, as well as glob­al ex­ec­u­tives in the pay­ments in­dus­try.