New national instant payment system BiMPay is “working well”, as nearly $8m passed through more than 20 000 transactions in two days of operations despite some users experiencing registration challenges, said Central Bank of Barbados Governor Dr Kevin Greenidge.
At a news conference in the bank’s Grand Salle on Monday, he acknowledged that, as expected, several “teething issues” were experienced along the way, but that these either have been already rectified or will soon be.
On Saturday, hours after the system went live, hundreds of people took to social media outlining that they were experiencing difficulties in completing the registration process.
Dr Greenidge explained that the issue primarily affected those with Gmail accounts, pointing out that in the hour after the launch on Saturday morning, 12 000 downloads were made, and with a large number of those persons using that email service, Google’s system considered it a “spam” attack and blocked emails associated with BiMPay.
“It meant that persons who downloaded the app were unable to get the code coming back to them to register,” he said, noting that after Google had been contacted, the list was cleared, allowing people to complete the process.
He acknowledged that despite the stress testing conducted prior to the system going live, there has been no way to anticipate that the majority of people seeking to register would have Gmail accounts or Google’s defence mechanisms.
Speaking on the system’s performance, Dr Greenidge said that less than one per cent of the transactions had failed, and this was due to formatting issues.
“In a system that has now launched this is a very high success rate — 99 per cent of all those 20 000 transactions with a combined value of $8m were successful. The payment system is doing what it is supposed to be doing. It is working great and that is across all institutions and that less than one percent was due to formatting issues like the account number, branch number. We met with the CEOs on Sunday and [Monday] morning again and we are working through those issues.”
The Central Bank was working with financial institutions regarding the token links required for BiMPay, the governor said.
“You need to get your token from your financial institution either by text, email or log in to your banking app. A number of them have chosen for you to log into your banking app and unfortunately not all of them have displayed carefully on the front page as required the token for your BiMPay. So we are working with them to ensure that every financial institution displays a button or link on their front page that says ‘BiMPay token’ and then you will use this to go into your app.”
Declining to give a figure as to how much the payment system cost to launch, Dr Greenidge highlighted the importance of a system providing instant cash transactions across the board, noting that due to Barbados’ size, no single financial institution could provide such a service.
“Since the Central Bank is an independent institution in terms of funding and operations, we do not rely on government for financing. So it’s not taxpayers’ money as we manage our own financial investments.”
“We provide this service because it is a public good and because we know that this improvement in the payment system will lead to us improving our economic profile, and will place us in a position to take advantage of regional developments and national developments as things come.”
Regarding phase two, which will incorporate more financial institutions and government agencies, including the National Insurance and Social Security Service (NISSS), the Central Bank declined to give a date, with Deputy Governor Michelle Doyle saying that standardisation across the agencies was key.
She said: “It is no small feat in terms of the platform that we have created. It means in order for everything to work successfully, there has to be standardisation in terms of payment data and what is submitted into the system.”
“And that is the kind of work we will do with the government agencies as well as the other non banks and any other credit union in terms of going through the process. That is why we are not committing to a date because that work now has to begin.”
“Unless you have that standardisation, it means that you can end up having transactions flowing into the system that may fail, and we want to avoid that. So we will put in the groundwork in order to basically partner with these entities to make sure that they’re ready to be onboarded.”
(JB)
