Guyana’s payment systems, difficulties discussed at ICT Roadshow
DPI, Guyana, Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Day two of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Roadshow continued today with a workshop on Digital Financial Services hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Center (ACCC).
The workshop was aimed at enlightening participants on the issues within the current payment systems within Guyana. The session was facilitated by CTU Telecommunications Strategist, Selby Wilson.
Speaking to the Department of Public Information (DPI), Wilson noted that these roadshows are “tailored to the needs of the country” in which they are operating in. He added that the current process of financial transactions is not only time consuming but costly as well.
“At the present time, payment systems for the Caribbean, particularly to facilitate trade, means that we have to find US dollars, we have to have corresponding banks to do the transaction and that adds cost.”
He highlighted that the workshop is also aimed at discussing a solution which will aid in fostering better inter-regional financial transactions. He expressed that there needs to be accelerated integration into digital financial services.
The Telecommunications Strategist said, “an important part of the technology requirement would be a blockchain technology.” He explained that it is “a distributed ledger technology that would permit the transfer of payments in companies across borders without the intervention of American banks.”
By: Anara Khan.
Photos: Tejpaul Bridgemohan.
Editor’s Note: Blockchain technology is one type of distributed ledger technology. Distributed ledgers use independent computers to record, share and synchronize transactions in their respective electronic ledgers (instead of keeping data centralized as in a traditional ledger). Blockchain organises data into blocks, which are chained together in an append only mode.