Raphael John-Lall

Lo­cal ex­perts agree that while mov­ing ser­vices like the pur­chase of PTSC bus tick­ets and pen­sion pay­ments to dig­i­tal plat­forms is im­por­tant, these are on­ly ba­by steps com­pared to what is hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries.

Bus tick­ets will soon be avail­able on­line, and pen­sion grants will be de­liv­ered elec­tron­i­cal­ly, mark­ing the end of an era de­fined by pa­per re­ceipts, long queues and the un­cer­tain­ty of mailed cheques.

Two weeks ago, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that this an­nounce­ment was made by Dionne Williams, man­ag­er of dig­i­tal pay­ments at the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (NPICTT), as the en­ti­ty un­veiled tech­no­log­i­cal up­grades aimed at trans­form­ing ac­cess to pub­lic trans­porta­tion and so­cial ser­vices.

IT con­sul­tant Shiv­am Teelucks­ingh in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian wel­comed these steps, but not­ed that it is on­ly the be­gin­ning.

He has his own busi­ness, Teelucks­ingh Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices and is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to the lo­cal me­dia on top­ics of tech­nol­o­gy, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er re­lat­ed themes.

“Yes, this is ab­solute­ly the right move, and hon­est­ly, it’s long over­due! Mov­ing ser­vices like PTSC tick­ets and pen­sion pay­ments on­line is a foun­da­tion­al step to­ward mod­ernising how cit­i­zens in­ter­act with the Gov­ern­ment. I al­so hope that they im­ple­ment a sim­i­lar pay­ment sys­tem for com­muters who use the wa­ter taxi from south Trinidad,” he said.

He gave ex­am­ples of how this sys­tem ben­e­fits con­sumers and so­ci­ety in gen­er­al.

“Dig­i­tal pay­ments im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, re­duce long lines, cut down on cash han­dling risks, and cre­ate bet­ter au­dit trails. From a na­tion­al stand­point, it al­so helps push fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and builds the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed for a broad­er dig­i­tal econ­o­my.”

He stressed that these changes are on­ly the first step and the Gov­ern­ment has to en­sure that they pro­tect users.

“That said, suc­cess here isn’t just about putting a sys­tem on­line, it’s about how re­li­able, se­cure, and easy to use that sys­tem is. This is where ex­e­cu­tion mat­ters the most!”

He said a ma­jor risk is dig­i­tal ex­clu­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for el­der­ly cit­i­zens who may not be com­fort­able with smart­phones, on­line plat­forms or even ba­sic dig­i­tal nav­i­ga­tion. If not han­dled prop­er­ly, this could cre­ate more frus­tra­tion than con­ve­nience.

In his view, there are a few key gaps that need to be ad­dressed:

Dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy — not every­one knows how to safe­ly use on­line ser­vices;

Ac­cess to de­vices and in­ter­net — still un­even across com­mu­ni­ties; and

Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty aware­ness — el­der­ly users are prime tar­gets for phish­ing and scams

He added that if pen­sions are go­ing dig­i­tal, the Gov­ern­ment needs to pair that roll­out with:

In-per­son sup­port cen­tres (prob­a­bly use Ac­cess TT Cen­tres for train­ing);

Sim­ple, user-friend­ly plat­forms (not over­ly com­plex por­tals); and

Pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns on how to use the sys­tems safe­ly (for old­er folks TV would be good)

“This can’t be a ‘fig­ure it out your­self’ tran­si­tion. Al­so in­vite younger fam­i­ly mem­bers to help guide folks, they need to roll this out prop­er­ly and if they do it right it would help a lot,” he not­ed.

Teelucks­ingh lament­ed that T&T is “sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­hind” oth­er coun­tries in this area.

“In many coun­tries, on­line tick­et­ing, dig­i­tal IDs, and gov­ern­ment e-ser­vices have been stan­dard for years. Even with­in the Caribbean, some ter­ri­to­ries have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed more seam­less dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment plat­forms. The re­al­i­ty is this isn’t cut­ting-edge any­more, it’s base­line in­fra­struc­ture in 2026. These are low hang­ing fruits that should have been done years now.”

He said there are two crit­i­cal fac­tors that need to be con­sid­ered.

1. Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty can­not be an af­ter­thought. The mo­ment con­sumers move pay­ments and pen­sions on­line, they cre­ate a new at­tack sur­face. The pub­lic is al­ready see­ing an in­crease in phish­ing cam­paigns lo­cal­ly tar­get­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment-re­lat­ed ser­vices. (Es­pe­cial­ly ed­u­cat­ing as­sist­ed phish­ing and scams which el­der­ly folks can be eas­i­ly swin­dled out of their hard-earned mon­ey). If these sys­tems aren’t se­cured prop­er­ly, or if users aren’t ed­u­cat­ed, there will be ex­ploita­tion.

2. Re­li­a­bil­i­ty is every­thing. If sys­tems are down, slow, or bug­gy, peo­ple will lose trust very quick­ly and re­vert to cash and man­u­al process­es. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is not just about launch­ing plat­forms, it’s about main­tain­ing them at a high stan­dard con­sis­tent­ly.

3. T&T’s le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work needs to catch up. Dig­i­tal ser­vices re­ly heav­i­ly on da­ta pro­tec­tion, elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions and ac­count­abil­i­ty. While T&T does have leg­is­la­tion like the Elec­tron­ic Trans­ac­tions Act and the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act, en­force­ment, mod­erni­sa­tion and pub­lic aware­ness around these laws still lag be­hind.

He al­so said for cit­i­zens to trust dig­i­tal sys­tems (es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to pen­sions and pay­ments) they need con­fi­dence that:

Their da­ta is be­ing han­dled prop­er­ly;

There are clear pro­tec­tions if some­thing goes wrong; and

There is ac­count­abil­i­ty in cas­es of breach­es or fraud

He not­ed that with­out strong en­force­ment and up­dates to match to­day’s threat land­scape, dig­i­tal adop­tion will al­ways face re­sis­tance.

On the is­sue of mov­ing to­wards a cash­less so­ci­ety, he said this is a long process.

“We need to be­come a dig­i­tal­ly first, cash sup­port­ed so­ci­ety. The re­al goal should be ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal pay­ment adop­tion while main­tain­ing cash as a fall­back op­tion. But we have not reached that far as yet and this is the base­line foun­da­tion any coun­try should have in 2026.”

He spoke about risks in­volved.

“There is talk about fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion. Not every­one has ac­cess to bank­ing ser­vices, smart­phones, or sta­ble in­ter­net. A ful­ly cash­less sys­tem can un­in­ten­tion­al­ly ex­clude vul­ner­a­ble groups (par­tic­u­lar­ly the el­der­ly), low­er-in­come com­mu­ni­ties, and rur­al pop­u­la­tions. Not to men­tion the in­crease in bank­ing fees etc which will make more per­sons think twice be­fore do­ing a lot of pay­ments. As a cus­tomer of Re­pub­lic Bank, I lit­er­al­ly think twice be­fore swip­ing for a trans­ac­tion any­more due to the com­ing in­crease in deb­it swipes.”

T&T’s lat­est steps in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion shows that the coun­try is now catch­ing up to more de­vel­oped economies.

Cas­tles Tech­nol­o­gy is a glob­al pay­ment hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­er head­quar­tered in Tai­wan. Found­ed in 1993, the com­pa­ny spe­cialis­es in An­droid and Lin­ux POS ter­mi­nals, un­at­tend­ed pay­ment so­lu­tions and mo­bile pay­ment de­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to Cas­tles Tech­nol­o­gy’s web­site, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is help­ing Eu­ro­pean cities get smarter, and pub­lic ser­vices and busi­ness­es be­come more ef­fi­cient. It is al­so cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for pa­per­less tick­et­ing in trans­porta­tion, which in turn is trans­form­ing op­er­a­tions and cre­at­ing bet­ter trav­el ex­pe­ri­ences for mil­lions of peo­ple dai­ly, across the con­ti­nent.

“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion has been shown to re­duce tick­et­ing costs by up to 85 per cent. Giv­en that in 2021, 5.2 bil­lion pas­sen­gers made na­tion­al jour­neys in the EU, the scale and scope of these sav­ings are im­mense,” the web­site said.

Ear­ly steps

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Win­ston Dook­er­an, who is al­so a for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter, told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that he has al­ways sup­port­ed dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems and when the idea was first put for­ward, he sup­port­ed the move and called for a seam­less tran­si­tion as he thinks it is a good idea.

“This does not mean that we are mov­ing to a dig­i­tal mon­ey econ­o­my, and since I spoke, the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies have been gain­ing mo­men­tum and the prospects of de-dol­lar­i­sa­tion are be­ing raised. As such, ma­jor changes are ahead of us - be­yond the ease of pay­ment is­sue- so much work is need­ed to pre­pare for a tech­nol­o­gy-in­spired mon­e­tary sys­tem. Cen­tral banks will be chal­lenged by tech­nol­o­gy and the dy­nam­ics of the glob­al or­der ahead.”