It can be a com­plex task for a lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur to har­ness e-com­merce as a tool for grow­ing their busi­ness.Just ask Mazuree Ali, founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Tri­ni Trol­ley.

Tri­ni Trol­ley boasts of be­ing the first e-com­merce plat­form in T&T. With 20,000 items in its in­ven­to­ry, the site func­tions as a lo­cal "Ama­zon.com" where Trin­bag­o­ni­ans can pur­chase from elec­tron­ics to gro­ceries, all with the click of a but­ton. Most of the goods are stocked lo­cal­ly in ware­hous­es in Princes Town and Freeport, which al­lows for de­liv­ery with­in 24 to 48 hours.

The site was start­ed by Ali in 2009. He got the idea for Tri­ni Trol­ley in 2008 while work­ing at a full-time job and pur­su­ing an MBA in mar­ket­ing. He dropped out of the MBA pro­gramme to make the time to work on Tri­ni Trol­ley. One of the main chal­lenges Ali faced when he start­ed was the need to ed­u­cate peo­ple about e-com­merce and on­line pay­ments in T&T."Less than five per cent of the pop­u­la­tion had Sky­box­es," says Ali. "So, a lot of peo­ple at the time weren't com­fort­able with e-com­merce, so we had to in­clude pay­ment on de­liv­ery."An­oth­er big chal­lenge was the need for a third par­ty cred­it card proces­sor. When set­ting up an e-com­merce site, you need a third par­ty cred­it card proces­sor to col­lect cred­it card in­for­ma­tion, au­then­ti­cate that in­for­ma­tion and com­plete the trans­ac­tion. In 2009, there was on­ly one lo­cal bank of­fer­ing this ser­vice to busi­ness­es, and the fees and re­stric­tions in­volved proved dis­cour­ag­ing for Ali. He ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar hur­dles with the Unit­ed States-based cred­it card proces­sor he used in Tri­ni Trol­ley's ear­ly stages of de­vel­op­ment.

This all changed when Pay­pal mer­chant ac­counts were in­tro­duced to T&T in 2010. Pay­pal is a glob­al e-com­merce busi­ness and a glob­al provider of on­line pay­ment ser­vices. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Pay­pal on­ly al­lowed res­i­dents in T&T to pur­chase goods or ser­vices through its plat­form. How­ev­er, the in­tro­duc­tion of mer­chant ac­counts in­tro­duced new op­por­tu­ni­ties for e-com­merce."We were Pay­pal's first ma­jor cus­tomer in 2010" says Ali. "It made it very easy for com­pa­nies to grow an on­line busi­ness."Us­ing Pay­pal is not with­out its draw­backs, how­ev­er. It's a US com­pa­ny so the pay­ments are processed out­side of T&T and do not im­me­di­ate­ly go in­to the sell­er's bank ac­count. The pay­ment goes to your cred­it card where you can lat­er with­draw the funds. While there are al­so no ini­tial set up fees and no month­ly sub­scrip­tion fees, Pay­pal does charge a fee to re­ceive pay­ments and con­vert cur­ren­cies. This is charged when the sell­er makes an on­line sale.

An­oth­er is­sue Ali faced was the le­gal­i­ty of its on­line con­tracts. "On­line con­tract" refers to the agree­ment be­tween the sell­er and the buy­er which de­fines the terms and con­di­tions of the sale. "Those terms and con­di­tions that; un­for­tu­nate­ly, a lot of peo­ple don't read." Ac­cord­ing to Ali, on­line sell­ers have to cre­ate these agree­ments to pro­tect them­selves from lit­i­ga­tion, but they had not been backed up by leg­is­la­tion.Re­cent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment made moves to ad­dress the le­gal­i­ty of on­line trans­ac­tions, how­ev­er. The Elec­tron­ic Trans­ac­tions Bill was passed in the Sen­ate in April 2011 and sec­tions of the bill were pro­claimed in ear­ly 2012. The law, in ef­fect, gives a broad le­gal­i­ty to all trans­ac­tions and records that are elec­tron­ic, in­clud­ing pay­ments.

Zaf Ra­haman, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of For­ward Mul­ti­me­dia, a com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in buid­ing e-com­merce Web sites, claims there's a lo­cal third par­ty proces­sor that pro­vides more ben­e­fits to lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs than Pay­pal does. Sco­tia­bank has long been pro­vid­ing cred­it card pro­cess­ing to clients. How­ev­er, it pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ket­ed its ser­vice to large com­pa­nies, name­ly cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial clients. Re­cent­ly, there's been a mar­ket­ing push to ex­pand their client base to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and en­tre­pre­neurs, ex­plains Ra­haman.

So how does their so­lu­tion com­pare to Pay­pal? With Sco­tia­bank, there's a $3,000 sign-up fee and month­ly sub­scrip­tion and trans­ac­tion fees. How­ev­er, its main ad­van­tage over Pay­pal is that when the buy­er makes a pay­ment, the funds be­come im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ces­si­ble as they're de­posit­ed in the busi­ness' mer­chant ac­count. The funds are al­so processed in TT dol­lars rather than in US dol­lars, says Ra­haman."When it comes to e-com­merce, our mar­ket is rel­a­tive­ly young" says Ra­haman. "We have to start some­where and this is a good place to start."Ali will be at the Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po, which takes place on April 10 and 11.