For the fast pay­ments sys­tem pro­posed by the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and the Cen­tral Bank to be suc­cess­ful, it must be se­cure, af­ford­able and in­ter-op­er­a­ble with all the play­ers in the mar­ket, says Ald­wyn Wayne, CEO and founder of the Wi­Pay Group, the re­gion’s largest pay­ment com­pa­ny.

In an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last week, Wayne praised the roll out of the mo­bile-to-mo­bile, fast pay­ments sys­tem along the lines of In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI).

Once im­ple­ment­ed, Wayne said the cost ought not be pro­hib­i­tive and that the ser­vice should be seam­less and in­clu­sive so that the or­di­nary per­son can ac­cess it eas­i­ly.

In its lat­est pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries, which was re­leased last week Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank said a “pi­lot” is be­ing sched­uled in the first half of 2025 to test the sys­tem in T&T. The aim is to have the fast pay­ment sys­tem ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed by the end of 2025.

With this sys­tem, the Cen­tral Bank added, in­di­vid­u­als would be less in­clined to walk with cash and, as a re­sult, would be less prone to rob­bery.

The Cen­tral Bank al­so sought to ex­plain how a sys­tem like UPI can be a ma­jor gamechang­er in T&T.

“In­dia’s pop­u­la­tion is 1,000 times that of T&T and its land area is 640 times ours. Since 2016, In­dia has been on a suc­cess­ful jour­ney to in­tro­duce a ‘fast pay­ments’ sys­tem to most of its pop­u­la­tion us­ing a sys­tem called the Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI). Over the years, UPI has rev­o­lu­tionised how ba­sic pay­ments are made in this large, pop­u­lous na­tion from us­ing most­ly cash to us­ing main­ly mo­bile de­vices (cell­phones),” it stat­ed.

In the in­ter­view, Wayne ex­plained what he per­ceived to be the process­es that would con­tribute to an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the fast pay­ments sys­tem.

“This (UPI) is open to every one so it’s now an ecosys­tem you can build on, com­pared to it be­ing siloed. That is why the UPI sys­tem may be ben­e­fi­cial to us once it is used cor­rect­ly.

“If they bring it and say we on­ly want these four banks to sign up, then it’s not go­ing to make sense. That is be­cause every­body else who is not part of these four banks would not be able to par­tic­i­pate and it would just be a closed group sys­tem...The bar­ri­er to en­try should not be pro­hib­i­tive.

“The UPI sys­tem is just that; a sys­tem en­abling in­sti­tu­tions, banks, wal­lets, pay­ment ser­vice providers, to now give ac­cess to the UPI sys­tem or UPI net­work. And if the UPI net­work is open to all the play­ers or the providers in the mar­ket, it will now have a greater reach to the av­er­age man on the street be­cause the av­er­age man on­ly utilis­es one of all these so­lu­tions that’s avail­able, whether it’s a bank so­lu­tion, whether it’s a wal­let,” he said.

Why choose In­dia’s UPI as op­posed to some oth­er sys­tem?

Wayne said UPI has proven to be very suc­cess­ful in that South Asian coun­try even for the av­er­age per­son to use.

This ease of use of the sys­tem was al­so echoed in the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion note in which the Cen­tral Bank gave the ex­am­ple of a cus­tomer wish­ing to buy four dou­bles.

It said once the cus­tomer has a work­ing mo­bile phone, the UPI app down­loaded to their phone and mon­ey in the bank, the cus­tomer can trans­fer mon­ey to the dou­bles ven­dor’s ac­count.

The Cen­tral Bank al­so not­ed that the fast pay­ment sys­tem can al­so be used to: trans­fer mon­ey from one per­son to an­oth­er; pay util­i­ty bills; make do­na­tions (‘col­lec­tion’ at church ser­vices) and re­ceiv­ing grants from the Gov­ern­ment.

Wayne al­so shared his thoughts on T&T’s progress in the dig­i­tal pay­ment realm thus far.

Not­ing that many times change is dri­ven due to a need, Wayne said the biggest val­ue of dig­i­tal pay­ment is its se­cu­ri­ty as­pect. He said if more peo­ple un­der­stood this, there would be greater ac­cep­tance and trust in its use.

“The se­cu­ri­ty as­pect means your mon­ey be­ing safe. You don’t have to walk about think­ing, hey, ‘I have $5,000 in my pock­et, or $1,000 more pock­et.’ I don’t have to wor­ry about some­body steal­ing the mon­ey hid­den un­der my bed. So that is an im­por­tant as­pect of the case for a fast pay­ments sys­tem. And be­cause safe­ty has now be­come some­thing of a con­cern in Trinidad, I think with the right mes­sag­ing around this that it ac­tu­al­ly pro­vides a safer way for your­self and your fam­i­ly.

“Peo­ple would not stick you up for mon­ey they can’t get and just that fac­tor, amongst oth­ers, would be a cat­a­lyst for change once mar­ket­ed and sold prop­er­ly, not on­ly by an in­di­vid­ual play­er, but by the cen­tral banks and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions,” Wayne said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the val­ue of such a sys­tem needs to be ex­plained to peo­ple rather than say­ing, “Hey, this is what you need to do.”

Wayne al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance that the fast pay­ment sys­tem pro­vides to cus­tomers, from a se­cu­ri­ty as­pect, as com­pared to cash, for which there are risks of pil­fer­age, stor­age and trans­porta­tion.

The fast pay­ment sys­tem is al­so cheap­er.

“Imag­ine, right now, if you have a card pay­ment to make you al­ways hear three per cent fee for the busi­ness­es, or $0.75 or $0.25 for the card com­pa­nies, the net­works and so forth.

“Imag­ine now you could do this pay­ment us­ing a sys­tem that’s in­stant and you don’t wor­ry about how much fee you’re spend­ing. So these type of ben­e­fits, I be­lieve, once ex­plained to the pop­u­la­tion, they would un­der­stand the val­ue.

“Of course, al­so ex­plain­ing the se­cu­ri­ty around it that your mon­ey is not go­ing to dis­ap­pear in­to cy­ber­space. The mon­ey is here and will pro­vide the as­sur­ance that’s need­ed for the change to hap­pen. So how this po­si­tion is ex­plained to the pub­lic, I think, would be key. But I do see it as pos­si­ble, very pos­si­ble,” Wayne added.

The Cen­tral Bank had fur­ther not­ed that while it would en­cour­age the use of the UPI, it would not be manda­to­ry.

The Bank said, “It may be pru­dent to keep a small bit of cash for emer­gency pur­pos­es and make use of on­line trans­fers, cred­it/deb­it cards de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances. As with any fi­nan­cial al­ter­na­tive, peo­ple will need to get a ba­sic un­der­stand­ing of how it works, how to use it, and what to do in case of prob­lems,” adding that like any oth­er dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty de­fences (pass­word man­age­ment, care re­gard­ing on­line scams etc).

“In this re­gard, a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme will be launched to ex­plain these mat­ters,” the Cen­tral Bank said, adding that a ro­bust telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture is es­sen­tial, along­side strong Cen­tral Bank su­per­vi­sion.

About UPI

Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI) is an In­di­an in­stant pay­ment sys­tem as well as pro­to­col de­vel­oped by the Na­tion­al Pay­ments Cor­po­ra­tion of In­dia (NPCI) in 2016. The in­ter­face fa­cil­i­tates in­ter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and per­son-to-mer­chant (P2M) trans­ac­tions. Op­er­at­ing on a 24X7 ba­sis, UPI is used on mo­bile de­vices to in­stant­ly trans­fer mon­ey be­tween two bank ac­counts. The mo­bile num­ber of the de­vice is re­quired to be reg­is­tered with the bank.