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COVID-19 accelerates Govt’s digital payment push

by Marlon Madden
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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a “significant” number of pensioners to accept their pension benefits by lodgement, as oppose to the traditional cheque payment through the postal service.

This is according to Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn, who said his wish was that more people would gravitate towards an online payment method without being forced by a crisis to do so.

“I want to say to Barbadians that as the government and the various government agencies certainly try to upgrade their systems, I don’t want us to do these things because of a crisis, I want us to do this things because I know that your time is important and we value your time,” said Straughn.

“I don’t want to see pensioners at long lines whether at post office, the Licensing Authority, the Barbados Revenue Authority, and therefore the institutions have been working to upgrade their systems as well as the communication with the various stakeholders on how to better utilize those systems,” he said.

Straughn was speaking during the Barbados International Business Association (BIBA) Talks on Tuesday, which was held under the theme E-Readiness: Digital Payments.

He was unable to provide figures, but said there was definitely a huge jump in the number of pensioners who are now receiving their pension payments through direct deposit to their bank or credit union accounts, and this was as a result of the health pandemic.

“Since COVID we have seen a significant take up by some of those pensioners who were reluctant before to have their pensions go directly to their bank account, and we have seen that number effectively  halved since the onset of COVID, and we would love to see it come down even further,” he said.

Efforts to get figures from National Insurance Scheme (NIS) officials on Tuesday provide futile.

During the pandemic, those relying on cheques encountered several delays as the country went into lockdown several times out of safety concerns as health authorities tried to keep the spread of the COVID-19 under control.

The latest disruption to the delivery of pension cheques came in mid-February this year when the NIS office announced that although the cheques were prepared they would be delivered “on resumption of local postal services”.

Since coming to office in 2018, the Mia Mottley led government has been indicating its desire to eliminate the issuing of cheques, but has not set a firm date for doing so.

Straughn, who was speaking broadly on the planned roll out of the national digital payment system, said when the process started in January 2019, the aim within the Treasury, the NIS and several other government departments was to “aggressively try to onboard as many people so as to strategically minimize the printing of cheques”.

In September last year, Government took the decision to stop issuing cheques for payment of short-term benefits including unemployment, maternity and sickness. Those payments are now made electronically.

Over the past year especially, the NIS has also been urging pensioners who already have a commercial bank or credit union account to make the switch from cheques to direct deposit.

Pensioners are paid their benefits every four weeks. The payments are issued for 13 four-week periods each year for those paid by direct deposit to their accounts, or 26 two-week periods for those receiving cheques through the mail.
(MM)

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