An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

E-com­merce plat­forms are grow­ing as many busi­ness­es are now mak­ing it eas­i­er for their cus­tomers to trans­act busi­ness on­line and one such com­pa­ny is First At­lantic Com­merce.

FAC was found­ed and in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1998 in Bermu­da.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, FAC chief ex­ec­u­tive Chris Burns said the com­pa­ny op­er­ates in 29 coun­tries, pro­cess­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars a year, and it is the most con­nect­ed pay­ment gate­way in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca with team mem­bers in five coun­tries.

When asked what in­spired First At­lantic Com­merce to of­fer e-com­merce plat­forms in Trinidad, Burns said it was clear to the com­pa­ny that the Caribbean was an un­der­served mar­ket when it came to e-com­merce so­lu­tions, and that the FAC plat­form could pro­vide a cus­tomised tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tion to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of com­pa­nies and banks in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean mar­ket.

“Giv­en the num­ber of coun­tries and the frag­ment­ed na­ture of the tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms, it was a sig­nif­i­cant un­der­tak­ing that no pay­ment com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly over­come. “FAC is con­nect­ed in the Caribbean, with 14 dif­fer­ent banks on the plat­form and over 10,000 com­pa­nies en­abled to take cred­it cards and brand­ed deb­it cards through their e-com­merce busi­ness­es.

“Oth­er clients in­clude Flow, Dig­i­cel, and many of the re­gion’s gov­ern­ments, in­clud­ing T&T, and ma­jor util­i­ties,” Burns ex­plained.

Gov­ern­ment min­istries in this coun­try and many oth­er gov­ern­ments across the Caribbean are look­ing to stream­line their op­er­a­tions and make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to pay tax­es, cus­toms du­ties, fines, li­cens­ing, ap­pli­ca­tion and visa fees, and more, through a se­cure and re­li­able plat­form, said Burns.

He said FAC’s pay­ment so­lu­tions en­able gov­ern­ments to au­to­mate, se­cure, and eas­i­ly rec­on­cile pay­ment col­lec­tion.

Ques­tioned on how se­cure the plat­form is, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­crease in cy­ber­crime, Burns high­light­ed that as a pay­ment gate­way com­pa­ny, FAC is PCI DSS lev­el 1 cer­ti­fied.

This, he said, is an ex­treme­ly de­tailed tech­ni­cal au­dit that the com­pa­ny must com­plete every year to en­sure the high­est lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty on its plat­form. These cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments are set by the Pay­ment Card In­dus­try (PCI) Se­cu­ri­ty Stan­dards Coun­cil.

“FAC al­so com­pletes a year­ly tech­ni­cal au­dit as part of our fi­nan­cial au­dit. All clients must al­so ad­here to strict en­cryp­tion re­quire­ments when con­nect­ing to our plat­form and need to com­ply with PCI stan­dards.”

He not­ed that FAC has al­so part­nered with Kount, a lead­ing glob­al provider of an­ti-fraud ser­vices.

Kount’s AI and ma­chine-learn­ing plat­form, Burns point­ed out, eval­u­ates up to 170 dif­fer­ent da­ta points on a trans­ac­tion in mil­lisec­onds to pro­tect its cus­tomers from fraud­sters.

“The rules-based plat­form can be cus­tomised for each client’s spe­cif­ic needs. Our ap­proach is to help pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als and push fraud out of our re­gion. Our bank part­ners that have in­cor­po­rat­ed this so­lu­tion at a port­fo­lio lev­el have seen a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in fraud and an in­crease in au­tho­ri­sa­tion rates, there­by re­duc­ing loss­es and in­creas­ing rev­enue for their cus­tomers,” the CEO de­tailed.
Some SMEs may be hes­tiant to start an e-com­merce plat­form, but Burns said it is im­por­tant that busi­ness own­ers se­lect an e-com­merce plat­form that suits their busi­ness needs.

“Con­sid­er fac­tors such as ease of use, scal­a­bil­i­ty, cus­tomiza­tion op­tions, and cost. It is al­so es­sen­tial that you check which pay­ment gate­ways the plat­form is con­nect­ed to. Many plat­forms on­ly con­nect to US banks and US pay­ment gate­ways. We al­ways say, think pay­ments first,” he said.

Ex­plain­ing how e-com­merce spurs eco­nom­ic growth, the CEO said it elim­i­nates ge­o­graph­ic bar­ri­ers, al­low­ing busi­ness­es to reach wider au­di­ences and en­hance in­ter­na­tion­al trade and rev­enues.

This growth, he said helps not just large cor­po­ra­tions but al­so SMEs, en­abling them to com­pete glob­al­ly.

On­line plat­forms re­duce over­head costs linked with tra­di­tion­al re­tail, al­low­ing busi­ness­es to of­fer com­pet­i­tive prices, at­tract more con­sumers, and stim­u­late the econ­o­my. E-com­merce al­so dri­ves in­no­va­tion in lo­gis­tics and pay­ment sys­tems, gen­er­at­ing jobs and ad­vanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The con­ve­nience of on­line shop­ping boosts con­sumer spend­ing, in­creas­ing de­mand for goods and ser­vices, which dri­ves pro­duc­tion and con­tributes to GDP growth. Fur­ther­more, the e-com­merce da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach pro­vides in­sights in­to con­sumer be­hav­ior, help­ing busi­ness­es re­fine their prod­uct of­fer­ings and en­hance cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Burns high­light­ed that e-com­merce pro­pels eco­nom­ic growth by broad­en­ing mar­ket reach, cut­ting op­er­a­tional costs, cre­at­ing jobs, and in­creas­ing con­sumer spend­ing.

“As dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion pro­gress­es, e-com­merce’s role in eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty will con­tin­ue to grow in im­por­tance.”

With the e-com­merce trends ris­ing over the years in Trinidad the ques­tion, Burns was asked what per­cent­age of T&T has achieved fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion.

Burns said “Ex­act num­bers are dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late, but we have seen a sig­nif­i­cant rise in the num­ber of com­pa­nies in Trinidad that have en­abled on­line pay­ments, and many more are in the process of do­ing so. COVID-19 was a cat­a­lyst as com­pa­nies had to piv­ot quick­ly to en­sure they could of­fer on­line pay­ment meth­ods for their goods and ser­vices. Since the world re­opened, peo­ple who were pre­vi­ous­ly scep­ti­cal about buy­ing on­line have re­alised how con­ve­nient and se­cure it is. Cred­it card pen­e­tra­tion rates are climb­ing but re­main low in Trinidad. Since the lo­cal deb­it cards (LINX) have be­come brand­ed, they can now be used on­line, fur­ther dri­ving the use and de­mand for on­line pay­ments.”

He con­tin­ued: “Trinidad and the Caribbean, in gen­er­al, are still cash-in­ten­sive re­gions. We are work­ing on so­lu­tions with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments to make ac­cess­ing dig­i­tal so­lu­tions eas­i­er and tran­si­tion­ing from cash to dig­i­tal pay­ment meth­ods. FAC has re­cent­ly signed an MOU with Mas­ter­card to pro­mote fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and dig­i­tal adop­tion.”

Burns added the plat­form has grown 225 per cent from 2020 to the start of 2024.