About two week­sa­go, Shi­va Bisses­sar, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pina­ka Con­sult­ing Ltd, de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at 30th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment of In­folink Sys­tems Ltd, which was cre­at­ed ini­tial­ly to pro­vide a lo­cal deb­it card switch­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

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Three decades ago, when In­folink was found­ed, the lo­cal pay­ments land­scape looked fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. Phys­i­cal cash dom­i­nat­ed trans­ac­tions and the idea of in­stant dig­i­tal pay­ments seemed fu­tur­is­tic. To­day, cash re­mains king, but we have made progress to­wards re­tail pay­ments sys­tem in­no­va­tion with EMI es­tab­lished.

With tech­nol­o­gy ad­vance­ments such as dis­trib­uted ledgers and AI, we stand at an­oth­er in­flec­tion point—one where the de­ci­sions we make in the next few years will shape the Caribbean fi­nan­cial land­scape for the next three decades.

In­folink has been crit­i­cal to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s jour­ney to­ward dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial in­fra­struc­ture mod­erni­sa­tion. This po­si­tions you to un­der­stand both the promise and com­plex­i­ty of im­pend­ing tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.

The pace of change we’ve ex­pe­ri­enced over the past 30 years will pale in com­par­i­son to what’s com­ing in the next five.

In 2021, the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) launched DCash—the world’s first re­tail Cen­tral Bank Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy (CB­DC) in a mon­e­tary union. I led ex­e­cu­tion of that pi­o­neer­ing ef­fort and over five years, we de­vel­oped and op­er­at­ed a dis­trib­uted ledger-based CB­DC serv­ing eight ter­ri­to­ries.

At the launch, EC­CB Gov­er­nor An­toine ques­tioned whether the pace of Caribbean fi­nan­cial in­no­va­tion must be tied to the amor­ti­sa­tion rate of lega­cy sys­tems. The Caribbean has be­come a lab­o­ra­to­ry for CB­DC ex­per­i­men­ta­tion while larg­er economies are still mere­ly study­ing.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the re­cent read­ing of the Vir­tu­al As­set Bill sig­nals a two-year mora­to­ri­um on the op­er­a­tions of Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Provider (VASP) while au­thor­i­ties pre­pare to reg­u­late. FATF com­pli­ance is not op­tion­al, but the op­por­tu­ni­ty cost is de­lay­ing the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal ex­per­tise and in­fra­struc­ture.

We face a per­sis­tent con­straint that shapes every­thing else: for­eign ex­change scarci­ty. This is not mere­ly an in­con­ve­nience—it’s a fun­da­men­tal con­straint on our eco­nom­ic sov­er­eign­ty and our cit­i­zens’ fi­nan­cial free­dom.

Mean­while, we’re sig­nalling to adopt In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face for in­stant pay­ments. UPI is proven hav­ing rev­o­lu­tionised the pay­ments land­scape in In­dia. But as we adopt in­ter­na­tion­al so­lu­tions, how do we en­sure our pay­ment in­fra­struc­ture re­mains un­der our sov­er­eign con­trol and serves our spe­cif­ic needs?

The AI-Pow­ered Fraud Rev­o­lu­tion is here. Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence is not just trans­form­ing how we build pay­ment sys­tems—it’s rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing how crim­i­nals at­tack them. Deep­fake so­cial en­gi­neer­ing has moved from the­o­ry to op­er­a­tional threat. In 2024, a Hong Kong multi­na­tion­al lost US$25 mil­lion when an em­ploy­ee trans­ferred funds af­ter a video call with what ap­peared to be the com­pa­ny’s CFO and oth­er se­nior ex­ec­u­tives—all deep­fakes. It’s sim­ply a mat­ter of time be­fore this af­fects us in the Caribbean.

Deep­fakes will al­so af­fect the most vul­ner­a­ble amongst us. Fi­nan­cial sex­tor­tion schemes and ro­mance scams will be­come even more con­vinc­ing as per­pe­tra­tors use voice cloning and live deep­fakes.

AI-gen­er­at­ed syn­thet­ic iden­ti­ties rep­re­sent an­oth­er emerg­ing fron­tier. An AI sys­tem gen­er­ates a pho­to­re­al­is­tic face that has nev­er ex­ist­ed and cre­ates a com­plete iden­ti­ty his­to­ry—em­ploy­ment records, ad­dress his­to­ry—all fab­ri­cat­ed but in­ter­nal­ly con­sis­tent. It suc­cess­ful­ly opens a bank ac­count and that ac­count is used for mon­ey laun­der­ing or re­ceiv­ing fraud­u­lent trans­fers. When au­thor­i­ties in­ves­ti­gate, the trail leads nowhere.

But here’s the para­dox: The same AI tech­nolo­gies en­abling these threats al­so rep­re­sent our best de­fence - tools ca­pa­ble of de­tect­ing live deep­fake video and au­dio now ex­ist. How­ev­er, AI se­cu­ri­ty tools re­quire in­vest­ment and ex­per­tise. When in­ter­na­tion­al banks de­ploy cut­ting-edge AI fraud de­tec­tion while small­er in­sti­tu­tions re­ly on sys­tems de­signed for the pre-AI era, guess where crim­i­nals will tar­get their at­tacks?

The Mon­e­tary Au­thor­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore re­cent­ly is­sued guid­ance on deep­fakes. Where are you in con­sid­er­ing this op­er­a­tional threat?

Let’s think be­yond the im­me­di­ate hori­zon - about fu­ture pay­ment in­no­va­tions that could trans­form our re­gion.

Fu­ture sce­nario 1: The to­kenised Caribbean rcon­o­my

Imag­ine a Caribbean where com­mer­cial bank de­posits ex­ist as pro­gram­ma­ble to­kens. Your com­pa­ny’s de­posits at Bank X could ex­ist as pro­gram­ma­ble to­kens en­abling au­to­mat­ic set­tle­ment of com­plex trans­ac­tions all hap­pen­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with ze­ro set­tle­ment risk. Cross-bor­der pay­ments oc­cur in sec­onds, not days.

The Bank for In­ter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ments has demon­strat­ed through pi­lots that this tech­nol­o­gy works. The ques­tion isn’t whether it’s tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble—it’s whether Caribbean fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions will be is­suers of to­kenised de­posits or mere­ly users of some­one else’s in­fra­struc­ture.

Fu­ture sce­nario 2: Whole­sale CB­DC and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing in­de­pen­dence

Our for­eign ex­change con­straints aren’t mere­ly a mon­e­tary pol­i­cy chal­lenge—they’re part­ly a con­se­quence of our po­si­tion in the glob­al cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing sys­tem. Whole­sale CB­DC of­fers a po­ten­tial es­cape. Imag­ine in­ter­op­er­a­ble Caribbean CB­D­Cs de­signed for in­ter­bank set­tle­ment.

Com­bined with dis­trib­uted ledger tech­nol­o­gy, we could en­able pay­ment-ver­sus-pay­ment set­tle­ment be­tween Caribbean cur­ren­cies and ma­jor glob­al cur­ren­cies with­out re­quir­ing cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tion­ships.

This could mean: Di­rect TT dol­lar to Bar­ba­dos dol­lar set­tle­ment with­out USD in­ter­me­di­a­tion, re­duced re­liance on cost­ly cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tion­ships and low­er for­eign ex­change trans­ac­tion costs for busi­ness­es.

Fu­ture think­ing re­quires us to con­sid­er not just as­pi­ra­tional sce­nar­ios, but al­so cau­tion­ary ones.

Fu­ture to Avoid: The se­cu­ri­ty cat­a­stro­phe

We rush to adopt in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies with­out ad­e­quate­ly in­vest­ing in se­cu­ri­ty. A ma­jor breach oc­curs—per­haps a syn­thet­ic iden­ti­ty ring look­ing for in­ad­e­quate eKYC sys­tems and laun­der­ing pro­ceeds through our dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems.

The re­sult­ing loss of con­fi­dence sets Caribbean dig­i­tal fi­nance back a decade. This is the fu­ture we must be most vig­i­lant in avoid­ing. Be­cause un­like tech­no­log­i­cal de­pen­dence, a se­cu­ri­ty cat­a­stro­phe does im­me­di­ate, quan­tifi­able harm to re­al peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions.

Con­sid­er­ing as­pi­ra­tional and cau­tion­ary fu­tures re­quire ac­tion to­day.

In 2017, I laid a case for the cre­ation of an Ecosys­tem of Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­als at a fu­ture threat as­sess­ment ex­er­cise. I re­new this call to­day. We need to build Caribbean dig­i­tal fi­nance ca­pac­i­ty now—and make se­cu­ri­ty ex­per­tise cen­tral to that ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

Crim­i­nal groups prac­tice economies of scale, al­low­ing for spe­cial­i­sa­tion and procur­ing of ser­vices from each oth­er to stage an at­tack – think about Ran­somware As A Ser­vice. Bad guys are co­or­di­nat­ing their ef­forts while we con­tin­ue iso­lat­ed in si­los – what chance do we stand?

I pro­pose we aim, with­in five years, to have 500 Caribbean pro­fes­sion­als cer­ti­fied in blockchain se­cu­ri­ty, AI-pow­ered fraud de­tec­tion, and CB­DC ar­chi­tec­ture. How else do we achieve the crit­i­cal mass need­ed to sus­tain re­gion­al in­no­va­tion with­out per­pet­u­al de­pen­dence on for­eign ex­per­tise. Can such an ob­jec­tive be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to your sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals or your CSR?

Dig­i­tal Fi­nance, AI, and in­for­ma­tion se­cu­ri­ty are in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked!

Fu­tures think­ing is about prepar­ing for mul­ti­ple pos­si­ble fu­tures and shap­ing the one we want, while ac­tive­ly pre­vent­ing the fu­tures we fear.

Do we want a fu­ture where Caribbean pay­ments are pow­ered by to­kenised cur­ren­cies, where our busi­ness­es set­tle trade in­stant­ly across bor­ders, and where our cit­i­zens have sov­er­eign­ty over dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial in­fra­struc­ture—all while be­ing pro­tect­ed by se­cu­ri­ty that pre­vents AI-pow­ered fraud?

Or do we drift to­ward a fu­ture where we’re per­pet­u­al im­porters of tech­nolo­gies, where our reg­u­la­to­ry cau­tion be­comes paral­y­sis, where our fi­nan­cial sov­er­eign­ty is com­pro­mised by de­pen­dence on for­eign plat­forms—or worse, where we rush in­to dig­i­tal fi­nance in­no­va­tions with­out ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty and suf­fer cat­a­stroph­ic breach­es?

The choice is ours. But we must choose ac­tive­ly, not pas­sive­ly.

Thir­ty years ago, In­folink was found­ed on a bet that dig­i­tal pay­ment in­fra­struc­ture could trans­form our fi­nan­cial sec­tor. To­day’s bet is for Caribbean in­sti­tu­tions to ar­chi­tect the next gen­er­a­tion of pay­ment tech­nolo­gies.

This will re­quire in­vest­ment, risk-tak­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works that en­able in­no­va­tion while main­tain­ing the in­tegri­ty of our fi­nan­cial sys­tems. But if small Caribbean is­lands can pi­o­neer re­tail CB­DC, then we can cer­tain­ly lead in the next wave of dig­i­tal fi­nance in­no­va­tion.

The next 30 years of Caribbean dig­i­tal fi­nance will be writ­ten by those bold enough to act to­day.

What chap­ter you will be writ­ing, or will you mere­ly be read­ing?

Bisses­sar has a back­ground in strate­gic ICT and in­for­ma­tion ecu­ri­ty, and has pi­o­neered dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy re­search im­ple­men­ta­tion in the Caribbean.