It’s been al­most three years since Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert set a tar­get of tran­si­tion­ing T&T to a cash­less so­ci­ety by De­cem­ber 2022.

De­spite progress be­ing made about dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy op­tions in the coun­try, that goal is still some way from be­ing achieved.

Last week’s re­lease of the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Sur­vey (NFIS) Re­port 2023 gives some in­sight as to why: Trust is­sues. Specif­i­cal­ly con­cern­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and dig­i­tal pay­ments.

One of the sur­vey’s key rev­e­la­tions is that sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion does not ap­pear con­fi­dent in us­ing dig­i­tal ser­vices or lo­cal banks.

In a sec­tion of the re­port apt­ly ti­tled Trust, the sur­vey out­lined, “Trust was iden­ti­fied as a ma­jor bar­ri­er to ex­plor­ing dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices (DFS).

Dur­ing a fo­cus group dis­cus­sion with fi­nan­cial­ly ex­clud­ed in­di­vid­u­als, sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed con­cerns about the se­cu­ri­ty of their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion with­in tra­di­tion­al bank­ing sys­tems and on mo­bile/on­line bank­ing plat­forms, fear­ing that it might be at risk for theft.”

The sec­tion con­tin­ued, “More­over, some in­di­vid­u­als felt un­com­fort­able with the use of DFS, or cash­less so­lu­tions, as they be­lieved that ex­ter­nal par­ties would mon­i­tor their fi­nances. Fe­male par­tic­i­pants of the fo­cus groups were scep­ti­cal about fin­tech, high­light­ing con­cerns about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and se­cu­ri­ty. Some were, how­ev­er, in­ter­est­ed in op­tions to dis­cov­er more about fin­tech so­lu­tions once they were able to re­ceive am­ple in­for­ma­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence the per­ceived ben­e­fits.”

On the same page with the sub­sec­tion la­belled trust, was the head­ing sat­is­fac­tion, where con­cerns about the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor were al­so shared, with many ex­press­ing scep­ti­cism about us­ing those fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The ex­cerpt said, “The qual­i­ta­tive da­ta analy­sis re­vealed that sev­er­al fe­male par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. They cit­ed un­nec­es­sary fees, lack of trans­paren­cy, and de­lays in ac­cess­ing their sav­ings as ma­jor con­cerns. It was ob­served that women ex­pressed more frus­tra­tion, which may sug­gest that there are po­ten­tial in­equities in the treat­ment or pro­vi­sion of ac­counts or in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the ac­count open­ing process­es in tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.”

The re­port al­so ex­plained that el­der­ly par­tic­i­pants men­tioned the long bu­reau­crat­ic process­es, which cause de­lays in pen­sion pay­ments.

The NFIS said the el­der­ly seemed open to learn­ing how to use the ser­vices if cer­tain as­sur­ances could be made.

The re­port stat­ed, “They res­onat­ed with the idea of hav­ing pen­sion of­fi­cers come to their homes to pro­vide guid­ance with fi­nan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices..”

At the launch of the NFIS re­port last week Tues­day, most speak­ers in­clud­ing Im­bert him­self, ex­pressed con­cern that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMES) did not em­brace dig­i­tal pay­ment op­tions nor did many of them even have a ded­i­cat­ed bank ac­count.

The re­port even pulled some se­lect quotes from re­spon­dents re­lat­ed to MSME pay­ment ac­cep­tance meth­ods:

“Why do I have to fight you for my mon­ey that I have been sav­ing? That is ridicu­lous.”

“The ac­count main­te­nance fee takes out all the mon­ey that I had in the ac­count.”

“Now is a dif­fer­ent lev­el of crime. It has more com­put­er [dig­i­tal] crimes”

“It has cy­ber thiev­ing or what­ev­er so you have to check up on them things too, it have smart peo­ple out here.”

“I just don’t want my in­for­ma­tion out there like every­body. See how things are go­ing on in this coun­try.”

Con­verse­ly, the re­port did find some who were a bit more pos­i­tive about dig­i­tal op­tions, but still many were con­cerned about po­ten­tial­ly be­ing a vic­tim of cy­ber­crime.

The re­port stat­ed, “Pos­i­tive­ly, 53 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion who were aware of on­line pay­ment sys­tems be­lieved that they were more con­ve­nient as trans­ac­tions can oc­cur at any lo­ca­tion or time. Ac­cord­ing to Chart 8, on­line ser­vices pro­vide var­i­ous ben­e­fits such as quick­er trans­ac­tions (40 per cent), re­duced risk of theft as­so­ci­at­ed with cash trans­ac­tions (26 per cent), and ease of use (15 per cent). How­ev­er, around 24 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion feel less se­cure due to the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with cy­ber­crime.”

Do­minic Stod­dard, the fi­nan­cial ser­vices om­buds­man, ac­knowl­edged there was a def­i­nite lack of trust with re­gard to the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor dur­ing his ad­dress at the launch of the re­port last week Tues­day.

“I can see to­day there’s a deep and per­va­sive mis­trust of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions by or­di­nary cit­i­zens, but if they know there’s some­thing called a fi­nan­cial ser­vices om­buds­man that will pro­vide them with re­dress that they don’t have to ac­cept every­thing an in­sti­tu­tion tells them it will, over time, build con­fi­dence in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem,” said Stod­dard. He not­ed that more work need­ed to be done to im­prove the fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy of the pub­lic as he al­so re­ferred to a re­cent sur­vey that re­vealed one in three peo­ple had been vic­tims of fi­nan­cial fraud in T&T. He how­ev­er stressed that dig­i­tal op­tions would large­ly im­prove fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and se­cu­ri­ty for most.

But not all pub­lic of­fi­cials have been glow­ing in that re­gard.

On Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar called for the sta­tus quo to re­main as she ad­dressed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

“The hy­brid sys­tem we have now with the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy and cash is the best op­tion at this time, peo­ple must have a right to choose how they save their mon­ey and what their pay­ment method is,” she said.

In her speech, she too spoke of is­sues which fell in line with the wider pub­lic’s mis­trust of lo­cal banks and pref­er­ence to .

“Cash is free­dom. Cash is in­de­pen­dence from con­trol by the state. You will have no pri­va­cy in a cash­less so­ci­ety, your pri­vate in­for­ma­tion will be at risk of hack­ing,” said the UNC leader.

“That’s one as­pect of it, that is your free­dom to use your mon­ey when and where you want once you do it in a le­gal man­ner. That’s one side. But the oth­er side is this, every trans­ac­tion you make with a card car­ries a fee for the card com­pa­ny, a trans­ac­tion fee for the card com­pa­ny and the bank. This card fee is an un­seen tax. You don’t see it.”

Two days af­ter NFIS re­port was launched, Re­pub­lic Bank host­ed a MSME Em­pow­er­ment Fo­rum, at which it at­tempt­ed to ed­u­cate MSMEs on fi­nan­cial op­tions pro­vid­ed by the bank while even us­ing suc­cess­ful MSMS who had ac­cessed fa­cil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by it.

Tri­cia Bis­soon-Pol­lard, man­ag­er, Cen­tre for Busi­ness In­no­va­tion told the group gath­ered at the event last Thurs­day, “De­spite MSMEs be­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal busi­ness­es, we re­alised that small busi­ness­es faced nu­mer­ous chal­lenges to ac­cess­ing fi­nanc­ing and fit-for pur­pose fi­nan­cial prod­ucts.

“We set about chang­ing that. We sought a deep­er un­der­stand­ing your needs and pains, to in­no­vate and cre­ate bank­ing so­lu­tions that are af­ford­able, ef­fi­cient, and tai­lored to the spe­cif­ic needs of SMEs”.

Dur­ing the event, Re­pub­lic Bank al­so pro­vid­ed the MSMEs the op­tion to utilise dig­i­tal op­tions in­clud­ing the bank’s End­cash mo­bile wal­let, Epay dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tion, busi­ness cred­it cards, over­draft fa­cil­i­ties, and the bank’s new­ly up­grad­ed cor­po­rate Re­pub­li­cOn­line plat­form.