GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Glob­al leader in dig­i­tal pay­ments, Visa has an­nounced a ma­jor lead­er­ship shift in its Caribbean op­er­a­tions, nam­ing Jorge Salum as vice-pres­i­dent and coun­try man­ag­er for Greater Caribbean Mar­kets, a new­ly-cre­at­ed role aimed at strength­en­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al foot­print as dig­i­tal pay­ments ac­cel­er­ate.

In its state­ment yes­ter­day, Visa ex­plained the ap­point­ment forms part of a broad­er re­struc­tur­ing that com­bines its north­ern and south­ern Caribbean op­er­a­tions in­to a sin­gle, ex­pand­ed busi­ness unit cov­er­ing 22 mar­kets across the re­gion.

Salum, who most re­cent­ly served as coun­try man­ag­er for the South­ern Caribbean, would now over­see mar­kets span­ning T&T, the East­ern Caribbean, Guyana, Suri­name and sev­er­al ter­ri­to­ries in the north, ex­clud­ing Puer­to Ri­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

“Jorge Salum’s ap­point­ment re­flects Visa’s com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing the next phase of dig­i­tal pay­ments trans­for­ma­tion across the Greater Caribbean,” Jorge Lemus, se­nior vice-pres­i­dent and group coun­try man­ag­er for Visa Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, said.

“His deep ex­per­tise, strong track record, and un­der­stand­ing of these mar­kets po­si­tion him well to lead growth at a crit­i­cal mo­ment,” Lemus said.

He said the re­struc­tur­ing comes as the re­gion con­tin­ues to tran­si­tion away from cash to­ward dig­i­tal com­merce, with a grow­ing em­pha­sis on fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and se­cure pay­ment sys­tems.

The com­pa­ny is seek­ing to deep­en part­ner­ships with banks, fin­techs, gov­ern­ments and mer­chants as part of that push.

“Jorge’s lead­er­ship will be in­stru­men­tal in deep­en­ing part­ner­ships with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, mer­chants, fin­techs, gov­ern­ments and oth­er stake­hold­ers to sup­port more in­clu­sive, re­silient, and con­nect­ed economies across the Caribbean,” he added.

In his new role, Salum is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on scal­ing in­no­v­a­tive pay­ment so­lu­tions and strength­en­ing the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port a more con­nect­ed re­gion­al econ­o­my.

“The re­gion is en­ter­ing a new stage of dig­i­tal pay­ments trans­for­ma­tion, where the fo­cus is not on­ly on ex­pand­ing ac­cess, but on cre­at­ing trust­ed, seam­less, and in­clu­sive pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ences that sup­port every­day com­merce, small-busi­ness growth, tourism, pub­lic-sec­tor mod­erni­sa­tion and cross-bor­der con­nec­tiv­i­ty,” Salum said.

He added that Visa would con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with stake­hold­ers to sup­port small busi­ness growth, tourism ac­tiv­i­ty and pub­lic sec­tor mod­erni­sa­tion, while im­prov­ing cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions across Caribbean mar­kets.

“We will con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with our clients and part­ners to scale in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions, strength­en pay­ment in­fra­struc­ture, and help build more re­silient and in­clu­sive dig­i­tal economies across the re­gion,” Salum fur­ther ex­plained.

The lead­er­ship change fol­lowed the re­tire­ment of long-serv­ing ex­ec­u­tive Frank Gan­dar­il­las, who spent near­ly three decades at Visa and most re­cent­ly led the North­ern Caribbean port­fo­lio.

Gan­dar­il­las, who joined Visa in 1998, held mul­ti­ple roles across the sales or­gan­i­sa­tion and most re­cent­ly served as coun­try man­ag­er for the North­ern Caribbean, over­see­ing key client re­la­tion­ships in mar­kets in­clud­ing The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, Cay­man Is­lands, Ja­maica, and Turks and Caicos.

Visa de­scribed the tran­si­tion as a strate­gic move to bet­ter align its op­er­a­tions with evolv­ing re­gion­al de­mands, par­tic­u­lar­ly as gov­ern­ments and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions ramp up dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts.

The com­pa­ny op­er­ates in more than 200 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries glob­al­ly and says its goal in the Caribbean re­mains fo­cused on build­ing more re­silient and in­clu­sive dig­i­tal economies through se­cure and ef­fi­cient pay­ment net­works.