By Staff Writer
St. Kitts and Nevis (WINN): Locally owned telecommunications company, The Cable, chose Thanksgiving to launch a payment card that aims to facilitate its customers’ digital business transactions, including bill payments and shopping online, with any company or vendor that accepts MasterCard.
The Cable’s Platinum Loyalty Card is not a credit card or a debit card and is organized in partnership with St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank Ltd.
It’s a prepaid card that operates with a minimum amount of EC$20 and a maximum monthly amount of EC$10,000.
Chief Executive Officer of the Cable Ms. Patricia Walters said it took eighteen months to arrive at Thursday’s launch (November 26) at the Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions (CCCU) in Fortlands, Basseterre on St. Kitts.
“Our card is a fully loaded leading edge MasterCard. So you can shop online at point-of-sale anywhere in the world that accepts MasterCard… It’s a futuristic move, yes. We see it as the first point of entry for all of our customers into a world of digitalization, it’s an approach which is saying that in an age where everything can be done online from paying your taxes, to renewing your driver’s license, to booking a doctor’s appointment, our customers, those in Fig Tree and those in Sandown Rd should have the same privilege,” Walters said.
Pre -COVID-19, cash remained king, in Latin America and the Caribbean, with many people accustomed to habitually using cash and cash was also more widely accepted by vendors, and there was a low acceptance of electronic payments.
The coronavirus pandemic over the past eight months turned that world upside down. A fact acknowledged by Walters in her presentation, “Cash payments accounted before COVID for about 90% of transactions… Fast forward and now in The Cable where we would have had about 10% of our customers pay with credit cards or digitally, it’s now gone to 40%.”
The CEO also shared her vision of increasing digital access for the people of the Federation.
“We have a dream that one day our citizens and residents will not be judged by the square miles of this nation, the small population size, of a perception of limited access to the digital world, but will be recognized and applauded as leaders in the digital age. A dream that no citizen is left behind in a cashless society.”
The Chief Executive Officer of the St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank, Mr. Donald Thompson in brief remarks at the launch explained the bank’s partnership with The Cable.
“The bank has coordinated with all parties to ensure that customers of The Cable will receive a card with “tap and go” technology…it is a secured card and it allows customers to make secure payments… The Cable saw that by partnering with the bank it could take the advantage of our vast experience into the card business,” Thompson said.
