E-MONEY ISSUERS or EMIs

The Central Bank of Trinidad & Tobago (CBTT) (Homepage | Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (central-bank.org.tt)) has overarching responsibility for payment systems in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) including but not limited to, the authority to make regulations for the issuance of electronic money (e-money), the transfer of funds by electronic means and the oversight of payment systems.

Via Legal Notice 284, the E-Money Issuer Order, 2020 came into effect, in Trinidad & Tobago, to allow other categories of persons, other than licensed financial institutions, to be eligible to issue e-money. These persons are referred to as e-money issuers and they are allowed to issue e-money. At the time of writing this blog, the E-Money Issuer Order was amended by Legal Notice 391 of 2023 – Legal Notice: THE E-MONEY ISSUER (AMENDMENT) ORDER, 2023 – Ministry of Finance. These amendments relate to the transactional limits and capital requirements of EMIs.

According to Section 2 of the  Trinidad & Tobago, E-Money Issuer Order, 2020,  an “e-money issuer” means a person under clause 3 of the E-Money Issuer Order, 2020 who is registered or who has applied to be registered to issue e-money under this Order and has been granted a provisional registration under clause 6.

A general definition of e-money (or electronic money) is that it is as monetary value represented by a claim on the issuer which is stored on an electronic device, issued on receipt of funds of an amount equal to the monetary value issued and accepted as a means of payment by a person other than the issuer (see Section 2(1) of The Financial Institutions Act, 2008 (central-bank.org.tt) of Trinidad & Tobago for a more detailed definition of electronic money). Some examples of e-money are e-wallets (digital wallets, mobile wallets), pre-paid cards etc.

See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UjdDPfXbQEA,  https://thelegalcornerpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1876478/13359516 ,  https://tenorequelegalandconsulting.com/what-is-fintech/ and  https://tenorequelegalandconsulting.com/fintech-at-work/ for more information and stay tuned for further fintech blogs.

FINTECH AT WORK

Fintech is already at work all around us and it is likely that it is being used by us more often than we even realise. Individuals use fintech to access many bank services, including, online banking, paying for purchases with a smartphone using mobile wallets. Your local bank card with Visa’s contactless credentials tap-and-pay facilities for fast and secure transactions. In Trinidad & Tobago, when you make different company-related online payments (with the Registrar General’s Department) for example paying for intellectual property services at our Intellectual Property Office (https://payment.ipo.gov.tt/) or you use the CourtPay – Payment Portal of the Judiciary of Trinidad and Tobago – CourtPay (ttlawcourts.org) these are powered by fintech.

And further afield, more than 3/4 of Chinese people are using digital payments rather than cash, according to previous Deutsche Bank research. The widespread use of QR codes has also supported digitalisation in China through Alipay (https://www.alipay.com/)  and WeChat Pay (qq.com) and many people around the world use or have used Paypal to Send Money, Accept Payments and Pay Online | PayPal TT; or Afriex to Receive and Send Money to Africa | Money Transfer App | Afriex App.

 

See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/inSMwiWDvTg  https://thelegalcornerpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1876478/13359516  and https://tenorequelegalandconsulting.com/what-is-fintech/ for more information and stay tuned for further fintech blogs.

 

WHAT IS FINTECH?

Fintech is a word blend of the words “financial” and “technology”.

 

Under Trinidad and Tobago law, namely the E-Money Issuer Order, 2020, (https://www.central-bank.org.tt/sites/default/files/page-file-uploads/legal-notice-284-emoney-issuer-order-2020_2.pdf), fintech is defined as “technologically enabled financial innovation that could result in new business models, applications, processes or products with an associated material effect on financial markets and institutions and the provision of financial services.”

 

It involves the use of new and innovative technologies to automate and improve the delivery and use of financial services. Some examples of these new and innovative technologies are – artificial intelligence (AI) for example machine learning and natural language processing (AI being a type of technology that helps a machine to think like a person), cloud computing, the Internet of Things, QR codes, big data and data analytics, blockchain technology (a type of peer-to-peer (P2P) database that uses data ‘blocks’, all of which update one another automatically as they grow, to build an immutable (permanent record) and distributed ledger technology, to name a few.

See What is Fintech? #law #shorts #youtube #youtubeshorts #fintechtt and https://thelegalcornerpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1876478/13359516 for more information and stay tuned for further fintech blogs.