CBTT approves new e-money provider

Con­ve­nience Pay Tech­nolo­gies has re­ceived pro­vi­sion­al ap­proval from the Cen­tral Bank to is­sue elec­tron­ic mon­ey (e-mon­ey), mark­ing an­oth­er step in the coun­try’s push to­wards dig­i­tal pay­ments and fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion.

The Cen­tral Bank on June 3 reg­is­tered Con­ve­nience Pay as a Pay­ment Ser­vice Provider and grant­ed the com­pa­ny pro­vi­sion­al reg­is­tra­tion to is­sue e-mon­ey in T&T for an ini­tial six-month pe­ri­od.

The ap­proval al­lows Con­ve­nience Pay to on­board cus­tomers in a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Cen­tral Bank as the com­pa­ny tests and re­fines its dig­i­tal pay­ment plat­form be­fore any wider roll­out.

Con­ve­nience Pay is a sub­sidiary of Unit­ed In­de­pen­dent Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Unipet) and was in­cor­po­rat­ed on June 15, 2022. The com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished to pro­vide tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions across both fin­tech and non-fin­tech sec­tors.

E-mon­ey refers to an elec­tron­ic store of mon­e­tary val­ue that can be held on tech­no­log­i­cal de­vices, in­clud­ing mo­bile phones, and used to make pay­ments. The dig­i­tal funds are typ­i­cal­ly stored in elec­tron­ic wal­lets and can be used for trans­ac­tions with in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es, whether or not the user has a tra­di­tion­al bank ac­count.
Cen­tral Bank’s pro­vi­sion­al reg­is­tra­tion en­ables Con­ve­nience Pay to be­gin of­fer­ing its dig­i­tal wal­let so­lu­tion to se­lect­ed cus­tomers dur­ing the test­ing phase.

The plat­form is de­signed to al­low con­sumers to trans­fer funds from their bank ac­counts in­to a dig­i­tal wal­let us­ing a smart de­vice. Users will al­so be able to con­duct peer-to-peer trans­ac­tions and make pay­ments to busi­ness­es through the sys­tem.

This move comes as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, pay­ment providers, and reg­u­la­tors con­tin­ue ef­forts to ex­pand dig­i­tal pay­ment op­tions and in­crease fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion across T&T.

The six-month pro­vi­sion­al pe­ri­od will al­low the Cen­tral Bank to mon­i­tor the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, com­pli­ance, and cus­tomer on­board­ing process­es be­fore de­ter­min­ing any fu­ture au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

Con­ve­nience Pay’s en­try in­to the e-mon­ey space adds an­oth­er play­er to T&T’s grow­ing fin­tech land­scape, as busi­ness­es and con­sumers in­creas­ing­ly em­brace dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions for every­day trans­ac­tions.