Cash­less pay­ments are on the rise in T&T, a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive at Visa has con­firmed.

In a re­port en­ti­tled “Dri­ving a Se­cure Cash­less Ecosys­tem in Trinidad & To­ba­go” by se­nior di­rec­tor of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment, Jorge Salum, it was stat­ed, “Cash­less pay­ments are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing promis­ing growth in T&T, fu­elled by the in­creas­ing adop­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies.”

How­ev­er, it not­ed with this rise, cy­ber­at­tacks have be­come more preva­lent.

The re­port said, “With this surge to­wards dig­i­tal, cy­ber­crim­i­nals are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed and cap­i­tal­is­ing on vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. While this is a glob­al ten­den­cy, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries like T&T are al­so fac­ing a sig­nif­i­cant rise of phish­ing schemes, at­tacks tar­get­ing e-com­merce, “free gift” scams and ran­somware, among oth­ers.”

How­ev­er, the re­port praised T&T’s push for greater dig­i­tal pay­ment avail­abil­i­ty.

Salum stat­ed, “De­spite this chal­lenge and in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a grow­ing and evolv­ing threat, T&T has been mak­ing tremen­dous strides in se­cur­ing the pay­ments ecosys­tem. Re­cent mile­stones in­clude (1) the mi­gra­tion of the mag strip deb­it cards to a Visa Deb­it Card se­cured with EMV con­tact­less tech­nol­o­gy, (2) mer­chants’ rapid tran­si­tion to 3DS 2.0 se­cure (an ad­vanced ecom­merce au­then­ti­ca­tion pro­to­col pi­o­neered by Visa), and (3) lo­cal is­suers work­ing close­ly with Visa Ad­vanced Au­tho­riza­tion—a so­lu­tion that analy­ses up to 500 unique risk fac­tors to de­tect fraud faster—and oth­er AI-en­abled trans­ac­tion­al scor­ing tools.”

How­ev­er, he ex­plained the coun­try could do more to en­sure se­cu­ri­ty and in­tegri­ty of pay­ments.

The re­port stat­ed, “This in­cludes the im­ple­men­ta­tion of to­kens, a se­cu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy that re­places sen­si­tive ac­count in­for­ma­tion with a unique dig­i­tal iden­ti­fi­er. In ad­di­tion, mer­chants should con­sid­er in­cor­po­rat­ing a trans­ac­tion­al risk scor­ing tool, like Cy­ber­Source’s De­ci­sion Man­ag­er, which lever­ages AI tech­nol­o­gy to help mer­chants dis­tin­guish be­tween fraud­u­lent and le­git­i­mate pay­ments trans­ac­tions.”

Salum added that Visa was com­mit­ted to lend sup­port to the coun­try in de­vel­op­ing these tools.

He said, “To do so, we are tak­ing an ag­gres­sive, mul­ti-lay­ered ap­proach fo­cused on four key ar­eas:

1. Cut­ting-edge cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty to com­bat so­phis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nals,

2. AI and ad­vanced da­ta an­a­lyt­ics to re­duce and pre­vent fraud,

3. 360º pro­tec­tion of the en­tire pay­ments ecosys­tem,

4. Ad­vanc­ing uni­ver­sal ac­cess to se­cure mon­ey move­ment.”

He con­tin­ued, “To bring this strat­e­gy to life, Visa is be­hind the scenes de­ploy­ing its vast re­sources and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to se­cure every pay­ment trans­ac­tion. This in­cludes over a thou­sand ded­i­cat­ed spe­cial­ists pro­tect­ing Visa’s net­work from mal­ware, ze­ro-day at­tacks and in­sid­er threats; three Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty Fu­sion Cen­ters on three con­ti­nents de­liv­er­ing 24x7x365 se­cu­ri­ty mon­i­tor­ing and in­ci­dent re­sponse, and sev­er­al hun­dred AI mod­els in pro­duc­tion.”