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GRENADA-BANKING-Rival financial institutions link up to launch joint debit card
by Nicole Best
ST GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC — Two rival financial institutions in Grenada – the lone indigenous bank and the country’s largest credit union – on Thursday jointly launched an international debit card with officials touting lower costs by joining forces.
Grenada Cooperative Bank and the Grenada Public Service Cooperative Credit Union have launched Connex – a Visa-branded debt card – promising low fees and charges.
It is the first time either entity is offering services using an international electronic payment system.
The general manager of credit union Lucia Andall said the main aim is to bring financial services to its members at a low cost and through shared resources, by using the Connex electronic financial transaction system that links the two firms.
“Connex and all it symbolizes is the culmination of a dream, a dream that was conceptualised that financial institutions sharing a common space could collaborate in financial services to its members and consumers by sharing and thus expanding the (information technology) resources of all,” she said.
The general manager of the Grenada Cooperative Bank, Richard Duncan, who is the brainchild of the debit card initiative, said the two home-grown bankers had so far issued 12,000 cards and completed 15-million EC dollars in card transactions.
“As indigenous institutions there are two things that we must do. We must compete when we have to and we must co-operate were we must,” Duncan said.
“So we always look for opportunities where even though we contest fairly and fiercely in the marketplace we also look at the same time for avenues to leverage our respective strengths.”
The cards can be used at both institutions’ automated teller machines and by 30 million VISA and Connex merchants and banking machines worldwide.
The Connex brand has been accepted by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and is being hosted by the St. Kitts-based Caribbean Credit Card Corporation (4Cs), a provider of financial card services in Barbados, Guyana and the Eastern Caribbean.
Most of 4Cs clients are the Eastern Caribbean’s indigenous banks and credit unions.
The general manager of the 4Cs, Jessel Gadsby, said that switching to the Connex electronic financial transaction system fulfilled an Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) recommendation for a system linking Eastern Caribbean banks and credit unions to enable them switch, acquire and issuing banking cards seamlessly.
“For the cardholders in keeping with the mandate we will provide a safe, secure and convenient way to access your funds in keeping with the ECCB mandate,” Gadsby said. “It brings more transactions to the economy, it stimulates demand and productivity and for the financial institutions it builds on infrastructure.”
CMC nb/jg/2012