Last week, a What­sApp mes­sage was sent to me out­lin­ing that a pay­ment ser­vice provider named Sure­Pay had an­nounced that it was ter­mi­nat­ing its ser­vice in Trinidad and To­ba­go ef­fec­tive March 15, 2025.

The mes­sage, which was from Si­mone Jack, su­per­vi­sor of elec­tron­ic sales at the PBS Group in T&T, states: “Ref­er­ence is made to the mat­ter at cap­tion. We write to for­mal­ly pro­vide the at­tached cor­re­spon­dence, which out­lines the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­fo­cus of PBS Tech­nolo­gies and its im­pact on the Sure­Pay op­er­a­tion in T&T.

“This let­ter serves to com­mu­ni­cate these changes and in­vite your col­lab­o­ra­tion in en­sur­ing a smooth tran­si­tion.

“We deeply val­ue our re­la­tion­ship with you and recog­nise the im­por­tant role you have played in the Sure­Pay net­work. As we move for­ward, we re­main com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with you to fa­cil­i­tate a seam­less tran­si­tion and to ad­dress any ques­tions or con­cerns you may have.

“A mem­ber of our team will be reach­ing out in the com­ing days to dis­cuss the de­tails fur­ther and pro­vide any nec­es­sary sup­port .”

On its web­site, Sure­Pay states that it has some ma­jor cus­tomers in T&T, in­clud­ing util­i­ties such as WASA and T&TEC, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers like FLOW, TSTT and Dig­i­cel as well as cred­it unions such as Rhand, PSCU and SFC­CU.

Among its clients, as well, are the HDC and the Uni­com­er Group, the multi­na­tion­al re­tail­ing and con­sumer fi­nanc­ing group, which trades as Courts and is head­quar­tered in El Sal­vador.

Sure­Pay de­scribes it­self as “an elec­tron­ic bill pre­sent­ment and pay­ment ser­vice, con­nect­ing billers and cus­tomers for an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive way to pay bills.”

In oth­er words, an en­ti­ty such as WASA or T&TEC, chose to use Sure­Pay as a means by which the cus­tomers of those util­i­ties could pay them.

Sure­Pay op­er­ates in Guyana, St Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad, ac­cord­ing to its web­site.

In its let­ter to its cus­tomers, Sure­Pay stat­ed that the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate its ser­vice in T&T ap­plies on­ly to T&T and that the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate its ser­vice here does not im­pact the over­all Sure­Pay op­er­a­tion or any oth­er ter­ri­to­ry in which the com­pa­ny op­er­ates.

Sure­Pay made it clear, in that com­mu­ni­ca­tion to its cus­tomers, that it re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing its part­ners and cus­tomers across all re­gions.

The fact that Sure­Pay is ter­mi­nat­ing its op­er­a­tions in T&T, but main­tains op­er­a­tions in coun­tries like Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions:

Why did Sure­Pay de­cide to ter­mi­nate its busi­ness in T&T on­ly?

Did the com­pa­ny not have the op­tion of sell­ing the Sure­Pay op­er­a­tion in T&T?

What is it about the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in T&T that caused Sure­Pay to ter­mi­nate its busi­ness here on­ly?

Have there been any de­vel­op­ments in the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment of bill pay­ment providers that caused Sure­Pay to ter­mi­nate its busi­ness in T&T?

Is the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in T&T less favourable than in Bar­ba­dos or Guyana?

It seems to me that a com­pa­ny like Sure­Pay would not close its busi­ness in T&T alone if it felt that the prospects of con­tin­u­ing to do busi­ness here were pro­pi­tious.

If that sen­tence is true, can it be con­clud­ed that Sure­Pay does not be­lieve that prospects of con­tin­u­ing to do busi­ness in T&T are favourable OR is this some­thing spe­cif­ic to bill pay­ments in T&T?

The an­swer to that ques­tion is im­por­tant be­cause the per­son who con­trols Sure­Pay is an ex­treme­ly shrewd Ja­maican busi­ness­man by the name of Paul Barn­a­by Scott, who is more com­mon­ly known as PB Scott.

Mr Scott has a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in the Ja­maican com­pa­ny called Mus­son, which has con­trol­ling in­ter­ests in a num­ber of pub­licly list­ed sub­sidiaries, in­clud­ing the food man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion group Se­prod, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent and Pro­duc­tive Busi­ness So­lu­tions Ltd, which I be­lieve is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Sure­Pay.

Pro­duc­tive Busi­ness So­lu­tions ac­quired 45 per cent of Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd (TSL) last year for US$6.07 mil­lion. TSL is one of T&T’s largest in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) com­pa­nies

Se­prod is known in T&T busi­ness cir­cles be­cause it ac­quired 60 per cent of AS Bry­den & Sons Ltd in June 2022.

Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent, which is one of the com­pa­nies con­trolled by Mr Scott, op­er­ates in T&T be­cause it ac­quired Mo­tor One In­sur­ance in 2019.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on the Cen­tral Bank web­site, Sure­Pay was ini­tial­ly reg­is­tered as a pay­ment ser­vice provider in Oc­to­ber 2019 and its reg­is­tra­tion was con­tin­ued to PBS Tech­nolo­gies on De­cem­ber 23, 2021.

The reg­is­tered/li­censed en­ti­ty is PBS Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed (for­mer­ly Massy Tech­nolo­gies In­fo­Com (Trinidad) Ltd), ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion on the Cen­tral Bank web­site.

So Sure­Pay was orig­i­nal­ly owned by Massy Tech­nolo­gies.

Ac­cord­ing to Massy’s 2020 an­nu­al re­port: “On Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020, Massy Tech­nolo­gies was ac­quired by PBS Tech­nol­o­gy Group Lim­it­ed (PB­STG) owned by the Mus­son Group, a long-es­tab­lished com­pa­ny which con­trols sev­er­al list­ed com­pa­nies in the re­gion. PB­STG was the suc­cess­ful bid­der in a com­pet­i­tive bid process that was man­aged by KP­MG.

“PB­STG is a sis­ter com­pa­ny of PBS Group Ltd, a lead­ing provider of ser­vices in the in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) en­vi­ron­ment and op­er­ates in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Caribbean, Colom­bia, and Suri­name. The com­pa­ny is list­ed on the Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica Stock Ex­changes.”

It has been re­port­ed that PBS Tech­nolo­gies paid Massy US$40 mil­lion for its tech­nol­o­gy group.

The point be­ing Mr Scott has qui­et­ly di­rect­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of sig­nif­i­cant pri­vate­ly held as­sets in T&T over the last decade or so.

What does it say about T&T that Sure­Pay, a small part of Mr Scott’s em­pire is be­ing closed down?