It start­ed off in 1993 when five ma­jor banks came to­geth­er to de­vel­op T&T's first ma­jor elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tem. To­day In­folink Ser­vices Ltd, the com­pa­ny be­hind the wide­ly used Linx deb­it cards, is worth over $400 mil­lion in as­sets, switch­es more than 40 mil­lion trans­ac­tions an­nu­al­ly, set­tles more than $11 bil­lion per year and is deemed a crit­i­cal pay­ment sys­tem by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T.

These facts were high­light­ed by In­foLink chair­man Avril Ed­wards when she spoke at a func­tion to cel­e­brate the 20th an­niver­sary of Linx at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day evening.

Ed­wards de­scribed as fi­nan­cial vi­sion­ar­ies the mem­bers of In­foLink's first board–Ronald Har­ford (RBL), Garvin Ake­ung (Bank of Com­merce), Ian de Sil­va (Sco­tia­bank), Lar­ry Howai (First Cit­i­zens) and Hamish Smith (Roy­al Bank).

"These men saw be­yond the bound­aries of their own or­gan­i­sa­tions to cre­ate an elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tem that would ben­e­fit the coun­try," she said.

Ed­wards, the first woman to hold the po­si­tion of chair­man in the com­pa­ny, said the Linx net­work ios now ful­ly re­dun­dant and In­foLink hosts a warm dis­as­ter site for all of its sys­tems to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of the net­work and all oth­er busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

She said: "In­foLink is much more than just the Linx net­work. It plays a ma­jor role in the elec­tron­ic pay­ment space and is ac­knowl­edged as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of elec­tron­ic pay­ments and out ad­vice is sought by many e-pay­ment hope­fuls in­quir­ing about the T&T pay­ment space."

In­foLink gen­er­al man­ag­er Gly­nis Alexan­der-Tam said it had tak­en 20 years of hard work to get the com­pa­ny to the stage of 24/7 ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty with al­most 100 per cent re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

"Tech­nol­o­gy is mov­ing apace. Linx is op­er­at­ing in an en­vi­ron­ment where a myr­i­ad of pay­ment op­tions are be­com­ing avail­able and af­ford­able and where cash is still king in cer­tain parts, so it is in­cum­bent up­on those of us be­hind the brand to con­tin­ue ex­plor­ing and ini­ti­at­ing cre­ative ways to en­sure its rel­e­vance in to­day's world," she said.

Alexan­der-Tam added: "These are ex­cit­ing times for Linx. A new age is dawn­ing in the elec­tron­ic pay­ments world and the brand Linx has all the right in­gre­di­ents with­in the com­pa­ny that is In­foLink to pro­pel it in­to a fu­ture where many things as­cribe to be the new norm."