By YOURI KEMP
Tribune Business Reporter
ykemp@tribunemedia.net
A digital payments provider is targeting 10 percent reduction in merchant service cost for the 1,5000 merchants signed up with the Lotus Rewards programme within the first year.
Sean Smith, SunCash’s business development manager, told Tribune Business the company’s partnership with Aliv on the Lotus rewards programme has the potential to reduce credit card transaction charges by 10 percent. “We just launched earlier this month, so we have to give it time, but we see that as a great opportunity and a great savings for the Bahamian public because here’s what happens.
“When you use your Visa card in any grocery store, with any merchant or any place that merchant is losing up to 7 percent of their sales. So if customers spend $100, they’re gonna lose 10 percent of $100 bucks, that’s $10. They’re going to lose $7 because of what they call the fees that visa charges you.”
He added: “But when they use our payment platform, they’re not going to lose that and probably lose less than two percent depending on their volume. This is a great savings for the merchants, so by using our local system they save money and the customers get to like it because they get points just like they get points with their visa card.”
Sun Cash will leverage the Lotus Reward programme to bring in more customers into its Sand Dollar wallet, so they can grow their base. If customers and merchants see the benefit of having Sand Dollars and using the Sun Cash app, then the faster the digital economy can grow.
Mr Smith also said: “Sun Cash has a total of 1,200 merchants signed up and it is up to us to on-board them into the Lotus Reward programme, so all 1,200 of those merchants will become a part of this system. Aliv’s initial list system has another 300 merchants and they have all agreed to come over. So it’s just a process of converting them.”
The Lotus programme allows customers to gain “points” when they use their digital wallet with any participating merchant and those points are not only transferable between other digital wallet providers but also with all of the merchants signed up to the programme. “A customer can get points from one merchant and use those points at another merchant, easy and seamlessly,” Mr Smith added.
He added: “Anybody that has a mobile wallet with sand dollar can participate. The whole goal was to make this ubiquitous, to get everybody involved because we didn’t want to make this exclusive because that doesn’t benefit anybody.”
“The whole goal is you have to create a system that allows everybody to come in to take advantage to participate where it makes a difference. So everybody would be able to come in and use the system and their way of being able to use the system will be Sand Dollar because Sun Cash’s system is not integrated with Island Pay and is not integrated with Kanoo and Kanoo is not integrated with Cash n’ Go, but the thing that ties us all together is the Sand Dollar
“That’s the reason why the government is so excited about pushing the Sand Dollar and the central bank is pushing that because that allows us all to be integrated.”
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