The Caribbean Fin­Tech Sprint for Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion has been launched.

“Lo­cal, re­gion­al and glob­al fin­techs can re­ceive grant fund­ing to de­vel­op dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions to solve in­dus­try-wide is­sues im­pact­ing cit­i­zens’ ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices across the re­gion,” a re­lease stat­ed yes­ter­day.

The Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), Unit­ed Na­tions Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment Fund (UNCDF) and Or­gan­i­sa­tion of African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic States (OACPS) East­ern Caribbean Dig­i­tal Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Pro­gramme launched a Caribbean Fin­Tech Sprint for Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion, in part­ner­ship with the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­ter and with sup­port pro­vid­ed by the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of East­ern Caribbean States.

“The Caribbean Fin­Tech Sprint for Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion aims to at­tract lo­cal and glob­al Fin­Techs with mar­ket-ready so­lu­tions to ad­dress three iden­ti­fied dig­i­tal pay­ment prob­lem state­ments across the re­gion,” ac­cord­ing to the re­lease.

“A max­i­mum of five suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants may be award­ed up to US$100,000 each,” it stat­ed.

Sprint part­ners in­clude T&T Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, RHAND and CLI­CO Cred­it Unions un­der the Cred­it Union League of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank’s DCash ini­tia­tive, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of East­ern Caribbean States, VISA, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, and the Eu­ro­pean Cham­ber of Com­merce.

The chal­lenge aims to strength­en cross-sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion by bring­ing to­geth­er the fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem across the Caribbean to iden­ti­fy in­no­va­tion which tack­les the fol­low­ing iden­ti­fied chal­lenges name­ly, dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions for un­der­served users of cred­it unions, ex­pand e-com­merce so­lu­tions for small­hold­er farm­ers and op­ti­mi­sa­tion of re­mote on­board­ing for D-Cash.