GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai has stressed that T&T “can­not wait any longer” to mod­ernise its pay­ment sys­tem, as he opened the launch of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the long-an­tic­i­pat­ed Draft Pay­ment Sys­tems and Ser­vices Bill and Reg­u­la­tions aimed at strength­en­ing fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, en­cour­ag­ing in­no­va­tion, and ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal pay­ments.

Speak­ing at the con­sul­ta­tion which took place at the Cen­tral Bank yes­ter­day, Howai framed the ini­tia­tive as part of a broad­er trans­for­ma­tion of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, not­ing that the pay­ments land­scape is rapid­ly evolv­ing with new tech­nolo­gies and providers.

“Pay­ment sys­tems are part of our dai­ly lives—whether we are trans­fer­ring funds, pay­ing bills, or con­duct­ing busi­ness on­line,” he said, while warn­ing that these de­vel­op­ments al­so in­tro­duce “new risks for con­sumers and for fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty.”

Be­gin­ning in 2021, the bank en­gaged stake­hold­ers through a pol­i­cy pro­pos­al doc­u­ment, in­cor­po­rat­ing feed­back with sup­port from re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

In high­light­ing what the frame­work seeks to achieve, the gov­er­nor said it was first, con­sumer pro­tec­tion—en­sur­ing fair treat­ment, safe­guard­ing user funds, and pro­vid­ing clear in­for­ma­tion and ef­fec­tive com­plaint mech­a­nisms.

Sec­ond, fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and con­fi­dence—through strong, risk-based over­sight to en­sure pay­ment sys­tems op­er­ate safe­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.

Third, in­no­va­tion with ac­count­abil­i­ty—cre­at­ing a trans­par­ent li­cens­ing and reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment that sup­ports new tech­nolo­gies while man­ag­ing risks.

The draft leg­is­la­tion al­so ad­dress­es key ar­eas such as li­cens­ing re­quire­ments, fund safe­guard­ing, con­sumer pro­tec­tion, com­pli­ance with an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards and the pro­mo­tion of fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion.

“These are not ab­stract con­cepts; they di­rect­ly af­fect how in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es trans­act every day,” Howai fur­ther ex­plained.

Once en­act­ed, the leg­is­la­tion will sup­port broad­er na­tion­al ob­jec­tives, in­clud­ing ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal pay­ments, en­abling gov­ern­ment e-ser­vices and ad­vanc­ing ini­tia­tives such as dig­i­tal ID and faster elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions.

It aligns with the coun­try’s wider dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and fin­tech agen­da.

“Look­ing ahead, this bill forms part of a broad­er vi­sion to mod­ernise the na­tion­al pay­ment sys­tem by 2035. This in­cludes ini­tia­tives such as in­stant pay­ment sys­tems, cross-bor­der pay­ment im­prove­ments, and emerg­ing fi­nan­cial tech­nolo­gies—all aimed at in­creas­ing fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty,” Howai added.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the con­sul­ta­tion, Cen­tral Bank’s Deputy Gov­er­nor Dr Do­ri­an Noel al­so em­pha­sised that the long-await­ed mod­erni­sa­tion of the do­mes­tic pay­ment sys­tem can­not af­ford fur­ther de­lays.

Re­spond­ing to in­quiries about the tim­ing of the new pay­ment sys­tems bill, Noel ex­plained that the draft leg­is­la­tion has un­der­gone near­ly two years of con­tin­u­ous fine-tun­ing with crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal sup­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

Hav­ing achieved a frame­work that sat­is­fies the reg­u­la­to­ry body, the cen­tral bank has en­tered an ag­gres­sive pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion phase, meet­ing with com­mer­cial banks and fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy firms ahead of an up­com­ing pub­lic en­gage­ment ses­sion sched­uled for May 26 in To­ba­go.

Noel con­tex­tu­alised the bill as a cor­ner­stone of the Cen­tral Bank’s strate­gic plan over the last five years, aim­ing to ag­gres­sive­ly push to­ward dig­i­tal trans­ac­tion for­mats, fos­ter pay­ment in­clu­sion and bol­ster wider fi­nan­cial ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

Ad­dress­ing press­ing con­cerns re­gard­ing cy­ber-se­cu­ri­ty risks in­her­ent in a digi­tised fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture, Noel ac­knowl­edged that cy­ber threats pose a dis­tinct chal­lenge to the over­ar­ch­ing fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly as lo­cal firms in­te­grate fur­ther in­to glob­al in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sup­ply chains.

To mit­i­gate these vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, the Cen­tral Bank rolled out com­pre­hen­sive cy­ber-se­cu­ri­ty guide­lines for fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions over the past year and has ini­ti­at­ed ac­tive on-site ex­am­i­na­tions to en­sure ro­bust com­pli­ance and risk man­age­ment.

When pressed on a re­cent IMF da­ta pack­age and re­port ex­am­in­ing in­fla­tion, the deputy gov­er­nor de­flect­ed spe­cif­ic cen­tral bank com­men­tary on the in­ter­na­tion­al body’s find­ings, re­it­er­at­ing that in­fla­tion re­mains well-con­tained in the low sin­gle dig­its based on of­fi­cial num­bers pro­vid­ed by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).