Guyana

According to Kepios, 43% of the citizen of Guyana had access to the Internet.

Guyana is a cash-oriented society, which leads to low financial inclusion. It has a rather traditional financial service system with six commercial banks; however, the majority of the customers are centralised in only three of them. 

In 2018, the Central Bank of Guyana published the national payments system development vision and implementation plan, which focuses on building a strong and efficient payments system for the country and was published with the intention that financial institutions serve better the consumers of today and be prepared for the needs of tomorrow. The project focuses on several areas: 

• Building the infrastructure for real-time payments 
• Improving the processing and settlement of payments among banks through an Automated Clearing House (ACH) system, which is an electronic funds-transfer system
• Increasing efficiency and lowering the cost of remittances and cross-border payments.  
• Expanding acceptance of electronic payments in merchants, vendors, etc.
• Converting government payments and disbursement into electronic payment methods.
• Building and increasing e-commerce infrastructure and penetration.
• Enhancing and adapting financial regulation and oversight framework.

The largest segment of Guyana’s Fintech sector is digital payments, with a total transaction value of US$104.40m in 2022.

The Digital Skills Training Programme in Guyana commenced in August 2020, where Guyanese between 18 to 30 years of age were trained with industry-relevant digital skills to succeed in the digital economy. Modules of training were presented on the topics of professional skills, communications, leadership skills and social behaviour, project management, UX Design, mobile application, web design and development, master data management, and so on.

Guyana ranked 104th out of 134 countries in Wiley’s Digital Skills Global Index 2021.