IN June 2019, Calum Cameron, from Proud Engineers of Estonia, said that Trinidad and Tobago can become a digital nation in mere months and not years.

This was because the country had all the relevant infrastructure in place.

He was the feature speaker at the William G Demas Memorial lecture at Central Bank.

In November 2023, Prime Minister Dr Keith C Rowley said, ‘I look forward to Trinidad and Tobago moving towards being a cashless society’.

He also said that the Government had partnered with Estonia to get T&T digitised.

In the same month, Rex Chookolingo, writing in the Newsday newspaper, retorted that ‘T&T is fundamentally a cash-based society’ and that many vendors and small businesses are cash-only.

The Express editorial of November 12, 2023 stated that ‘cash is essential for the informal economy’.

In May 2024, St Lucia’s Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre warned the banks about going fully cashless. He said he would seek support from regional ministers of finance for his position. Good luck to him with that and the T&T Government.

In his 2025 budget presentation, Finance Minister Colm Imbert remarked that ‘the rest of the world knows that cashless is the way to go for many reasons, including minimising opportunities for theft and fraud…’

Barely five days after his budget presentation, the Hyatt Regency, whose building/hotel is owned by the taxpayers of T&T, jumped out of itself and put out a notice that effective November 1, 2024, it would only be accepting cashless transactions in foreign currencyUS$, euros and sterling. $TT would be banned.

Hyatt would never do this in Jamaica or St Kitts and Nevis or St Lucia or Antigua and Barbuda.

Hyatt operates under a management contract where, for a fee, their brand name and management are used to run the hotel.

A couple hours later, it pulled the notice, after vicious backlash from nationals, and issued an apology. However, in its apology, the devil is in the details.

Hyatt’s general manager Michael Hooper said that the announcement was ‘prematurely distributed’. He also said that ‘at this time, we will not be implementing any changes to our payment process’. This clearly says it was a planned decision and will be implemented in the future, maybe after general election in 2025.

Was this a voluntary decision by Hyatt’s management or were they coerced or strongly encouraged by the Government to go fully cashless? Maybe someone is testing the waters.

It is crazy that a foreign company can come to T&T and unilaterally say that it will not accept local currency for transactions. That is a massive piece of disrespect to us.

Perhaps the T&T currency has reached toilet paper status, as God showed my deceased uncle so many years ago.

This comes on the heels of Mr Imbert saying that legislation will be passed to force energy companies, from 2025, to pay all their taxes in US dollars.

On Friday, I went to a grocery to buy a few items. When I went to the cashier, there was a young couple in front of me, with the man holding a brand new baby in his hands. The mother tried to pay ‘cashless’ with her card. It was rejected because the Linx/ Credit Card system was down. The couple had no cash on them and had to leave their groceries in the trolley.

A couple with a new-born baby! When my turn came, it was the same story. I also had no cash on me so I could not pay. I went to an Automatic Teller Machine next door, owned by a red bank, saying that I would swallow the $4 fee for not using my bank’s ATM. The screen on the red bank’s ATM was totally blank. Nothing at all. I also had to leave my groceries.

This is the exciting, cashless world that our politicians and bankers want us to enter-one where there is no backup and in which ordinary people will suffer immensely if there is a system failure.

It is time to store some cash close to the mango tree.

Linus F Didier Mt Hope