sto­ries by PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Multi­na­tion­al pay­ment card ser­vices com­pa­ny, Visa, yes­ter­day said that T&T is still a pri­or­i­ty mar­ket in the Caribbean for its op­er­a­tions, de­spite the con­sis­tent re­duc­tion in for­eign ex­change spend­ing lim­its on cred­it cards by banks in this coun­try.

Jorge Salum, coun­try man­ag­er for Visa T&T, ex­plained that these re­duc­tions large­ly did not im­pact the dig­i­tal pay­ment plat­form op­er­a­tions.

“Trinidad & To­ba­go re­mains a pri­or­i­ty mar­ket for Visa in the Caribbean. Visa is com­mit­ted to be­ing a dri­ver of eco­nom­ic growth, in­no­va­tion, and fi­nan­cial and dig­i­tal ac­cess. We’re part­ner­ing with lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, mer­chants, gov­ern­ment, and fin­tech to help strength­en a ro­bust lo­cal econ­o­my that is glob­al­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed,” Salum said in an emailed re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

He said, “We recog­nise that the cur­rent for­eign ex­change en­vi­ron­ment presents chal­lenges for peo­ple and busi­ness­es. It’s im­por­tant to note that ad­just­ments to US-dol­lar cred­it lim­its gen­er­al­ly don’t af­fect how Visa op­er­ates its net­work. In­di­vid­ual cred­it lim­its are set by is­su­ing banks, while Visa’s role is to en­able and se­cure­ly process trans­ac­tions. Visa’s pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to main­tain and op­er­ate the Visa pay­ment net­work, en­sur­ing its con­tin­u­ous func­tion­al­i­ty and in­tegri­ty. In do­ing so, Visa is com­mit­ted to re­spect­ing and com­ply­ing with the laws and reg­u­la­tions of each coun­try in which we op­er­ate.”

Last week, T&T’s largest in­dige­nous bank, Re­pub­lic Bank, re­duced its for­eign ex­change US cred­it lim­it to US$2,500 from US$5,000, months af­ter it placed a US$500 lim­it on new­ly is­sued cred­it cards. In 2023, RBL slashed its lim­it in half from US$10,000 to US$5,000.

Sev­er­al oth­er banks in the coun­try have al­so re­duced the US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­it on their cred­it cards. On Feb­ru­ary 10, 2025, CIBC up­dat­ed its month­ly forex us­age lim­its from US$1,000 a month to US$500 for per­son­al ac­count Visa deb­it cards. And in De­cem­ber, Sco­tia­bank cus­tomers with per­son­al cred­it cards, with the ex­cep­tion of the Aero Mas­ter­card Black, saw the max­i­mum lim­it re­duced to US$2,000. RBC al­so in­tro­duced a re­duced lim­it in De­cem­ber, with its cred­it card hold­ers see­ing the lim­it slashed from US$6,020 to US$2,058.

Salum said op­er­a­tions in T&T were not un­der threat as a re­sult of this ac­tiv­i­ty and not­ed this was not unique to T&T.

He said, “While the rea­sons to im­pose re­stric­tions dif­fer, across the West­ern Hemi­sphere, sev­er­al coun­tries have re­sort­ed to US-dol­lar cred­it-card lim­its in re­cent years. Visa works close­ly with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and reg­u­la­tors to up­hold le­gal stan­dards, pro­mote trans­paren­cy, and sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of safe and in­clu­sive pay­ment sys­tems world­wide.”