Fans at to­mor­row’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League fi­nal be­tween the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents will be able to do so with­out hav­ing to walk around with cash in their pock­ets when they are seek­ing re­fresh­ments from the con­ces­sion­ar­ies at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba.

This is be­cause Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, the of­fi­cial CPL bank­ing part­ner, is un­veil­ing its pi­o­neer­ing wear­able pay­ment plat­form at the match, which bowls off at 5 pm and will be pre­ced­ed by a women’s T10 match be­tween the NL­CB Rev­ellers and the Courts Glad­i­a­tors from 12.30 pm.

In a re­lease Fri­day, RBL said 1,500 lucky crick­et fans at the dou­ble­head­er will re­ceive a wrist­band pre-loaded with $50 to be spent at the ded­i­cat­ed Con­tact­less Carib Bar. The com­pa­ny said each wrist­band is PIN-pro­tect­ed and will con­nect wire­less­ly to al­low in­stant cash-free pur­chase.

“We want to make sure that our pay­ment so­lu­tions match the needs and ex­pec­ta­tions of the mod­ern Caribbean cus­tomer. Our con­tact­less wrist­bands will take the time and ef­fort out of buy­ing a drink, so pa­trons at the Hero CPL fi­nal can fo­cus on en­joy­ing the crick­et. This is a gi­ant leap in the dig­i­tal pay­ment cul­ture for the Caribbean,” RBL Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Der­win How­ell said in the re­lease.

“This is the first in a se­ries of in­no­v­a­tive pay­ment so­lu­tions that Re­pub­lic Bank will roll out in the com­ing months.”

To make a pur­chase, pa­trons will be re­quired to place their wrist near a con­tact­less ter­mi­nal to ac­ti­vate pay­ment. Pa­trons will al­so have the op­tion of re-load­ing the wrist­band with ad­di­tion­al funds via LINX or cred­it card, or can do­nate any un­used funds to the bank’s ‘6 for 6’ cam­paign in sup­port of re­lief ef­forts in the Ba­hamas.

“An RBL team will be on site to an­swer ques­tions from pa­trons uti­liz­ing the bands as well as to as­sist with top-ups,” How­ell said.