Glob­al cred­it card com­pa­ny, Visa, and the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) are col­lab­o­rat­ing to dri­ve fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in this coun­try, the TTIFC has said.

The TTIFC, which the Min­istry of Fi­nance has tasked to in­crease the use of cash­less tech­nol­o­gy in this coun­try, has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with Visa to en­able the Gov­ern­ment to ac­cept dig­i­tal pay­ments, de­vel­op the in­fra­struc­ture for lo­cal fin­tech providers to build and rapid­ly scale so­lu­tions, and cre­ate the con­di­tions to po­si­tion T&T as a re­gion­al fin­tech hub, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said in a state­ment.

It ex­plained the ob­jec­tive is to bring sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits of a tru­ly in­clu­sive and pros­per­ous dig­i­tal econ­o­my to T&T’s con­sumers, busi­ness­es, and the pub­lic sec­tor.

As part of the strat­e­gy, Visa, a world leader in dig­i­tal pay­ments, is work­ing along­side TTIFC as well as part­ners from the bank­ing and fin­tech sec­tors to pro­vide ac­cess to fi­nan­cial tools while en­cour­ag­ing and ac­cel­er­at­ing the adop­tion of dig­i­tal pay­ments across the pub­lic sec­tor with a roadmap fo­cused on sev­er­al ar­eas.

These in­clude lever­ag­ing Visa’s cy­ber­source pay­ments plat­form to se­cure­ly ac­cept and scale dig­i­tal pay­ments by en­abling lo­cal Fin­Tech, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, and mer­chants to ef­fi­cient­ly in­no­vate on a foun­da­tion that pro­vides API-based ca­pa­bil­i­ties, such as in­ter­op­er­a­ble to­keni­sa­tion, 3D Se­cure 2.0, and funds dis­burse­ment.

It al­so seeks to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled fin­tech in­no­va­tion work­space—the TTIFC’s Fin­Tech In­no­va­tion Hub which will pro­vide a col­lab­o­ra­tive venue for stake­hold­ers, key dig­i­tal fi­nance play­ers, and fin­tech to ex­change in­no­v­a­tive ideas, de­vel­op mar­ket-rel­e­vant so­lu­tions and show­case ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies that can solve in­dus­try-wide is­sues.

Visa is al­ready mak­ing strides in shap­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal fi­nance agen­da and ex­pand­ing cash­less pay­ment ac­cep­tance for its cit­i­zens.

The com­pa­ny’s cy­ber­source tech­nol­o­gy is al­ready in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the dig­i­tal pay­ments om­nichan­nel pay­ment net­work re­cent­ly launched by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), the Gov­ern­ment’s first cor­po­ra­tion to of­fer cash­less pay­ment op­tions to cus­tomers.