As Trinidad and To­ba­go moves clos­er to uni­ver­sal­ly em­brac­ing con­tact­less pay­ments sys­tems, VISA has is­sued a new ad­vi­so­ry shar­ing the ben­e­fits of and pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty tips for the best and safest use of this tech­nol­o­gy.

Trinidad and To­ba­go moved an­oth­er step clos­er to this goal when the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion (MDT) and NPCI In­ter­na­tion­al Pay­ments Lim­it­ed (NI­PL) of In­dia, signed an agree­ment on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024, which makes T&T the first Caribbean coun­try to adopt Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI) tech­nol­o­gy.  The Min­istry said UPI tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the flex­i­bil­i­ty to trans­act from any bank ac­count—from par­tic­i­pat­ing banks—us­ing mo­bile phones, mak­ing it eas­i­er and more af­ford­able for cit­i­zens to use dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems.

In its lat­est ad­vi­so­ry, Visa notes that con­tact­less pay­ments—tap-to-pay with a con­tact­less card, mo­bile de­vice, or wear­able—are quick­ly be­com­ing one of the most con­ve­nient, re­li­able, and se­cure ways to pay world­wide. Con­tact­less pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy en­ables a fast and con­ve­nient way to pay for dai­ly pur­chas­es. It al­so of­fers a se­cure and re­li­able ex­pe­ri­ence. Con­tact­less trans­ac­tions are pro­tect­ed with EMV® chip se­cu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy and to­k­eniza­tion, which have al­ready proven to dras­ti­cal­ly re­duce coun­ter­feit fraud.

Ac­cord­ing to Visa, in re­cent years, this tech­nol­o­gy has gained wide ac­cep­tance among Visa users. Dur­ing the April-June quar­ter of this year, tap-to-pay (known as con­tact­less pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy) grew 4% com­pared to last year, reach­ing 80% of face-to-face trans­ac­tions glob­al­ly, ex­clud­ing the Unit­ed States (U.S.).

Visa re­ports that in the U.S., it al­ready ex­ceeds 50%, and 30 U.S. cities have a pen­e­tra­tion rate above 60%.  

Mean­while, in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the pen­e­tra­tion of con­tact­less pay­ment use grew to 66%, as con­sumers have cho­sen to use this so­lu­tion and have found it ef­fi­cient and con­ve­nient when pay­ing at lo­cal mer­chants.”

And in mar­kets with emerg­ing adop­tion of con­tact­less pay­ments, Trinidad and To­ba­go shows progress with 55% pen­e­tra­tion, and Ja­maica with 50%, as Jorge Salum, Coun­ty Man­ag­er of Visa Trinidad & To­ba­go, ex­plains.

“Con­tact­less pay­ment cre­den­tials have set a new path in tech­no­log­i­cal and fi­nan­cial in­no­va­tion. They are paving the way for oth­er in­no­va­tions that will make the con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ence safe, sim­ple, con­ve­nient, and fric­tion­less,” Salum said.

He not­ed: “The adop­tion of con­tact­less pay­ments by con­sumers world­wide, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, serves as a boost to con­tin­ue work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the pay­ment ecosys­tem to de­vel­op so­lu­tions and ap­pli­ca­tions that bring ben­e­fits, in­no­va­tion, and se­cu­ri­ty in pay­ing or re­ceiv­ing pay­ments for both in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es.”

A customer carrying out a contactless payment transaction. [Image courtesy Visa Trinidad and Tobago.

Lara Solanki/VISA

Visa’s safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty ad­vice for con­tact­less pay­ments

When us­ing con­tact­less pay­ments, it is im­por­tant to con­sid­er:

     ●   The con­sumer must en­sure their card or de­vice is en­abled for con­tact­less pay­ments.

     ●   When mak­ing a pur­chase, the con­sumer on­ly needs to tap their con­tact­less-en­abled de­vice or card to the pay­ment ter­mi­nal.

     ●   The point of sale emits a vi­su­al or au­di­ble sig­nal in­di­cat­ing that the trans­ac­tion has been sent to the card is­suer's bank for ap­proval.

     ●   Visa se­cu­ri­ty risk analy­ses are ap­plied to ver­i­fy the trans­ac­tion.

     ●   The is­suer's bank re­sponse re­turns, in­di­cat­ing whether the pur­chase can pro­ceed.

The con­tact­less card or con­tact­less-en­abled de­vice is se­cure for sev­er­al rea­sons:

     ●   Each trans­ac­tion is ac­com­pa­nied by a unique code that se­cure­ly pro­tects card­hold­er pay­ment in­for­ma­tion.

     ●   Con­tact­less tech­nol­o­gy re­quires the mer­chant to ini­ti­ate the pay­ment first, and the con­tact­less card or con­tact­less-en­abled de­vice must be held in close prox­im­i­ty (2.5-5 cm) to the ter­mi­nal for the trans­ac­tion to oc­cur.

     ●   Con­tact­less trans­ac­tions are re­li­able and se­cure, in the rare event of an un­in­tend­ed trans­ac­tion, card­hold­ers have mul­ti­ple ways to con­tact their is­su­ing bank to ini­ti­ate a re­fund re­quest.

     ●   Ad­di­tion­al­ly, var­i­ous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions of­fer in­stant alerts about trans­ac­tions made with their cre­den­tials, and card­hold­ers have chan­nels to con­tact their is­suers in case there are unau­tho­rized trans­ac­tions in their state­ments.