The Tribune

• Island Pay to help combat ‘game changer fear’

• Says merchants less accepting than consumers 

• On track to double payments handled to $200m

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian payments provider yesterday disclosed it is targeting “manageable” annual growth of 25-30 percent in digital wallet users while pledging to do its part in reducing the “fear” surrounding electronic transactions.

Jeffrey Beckles, Island Pay’s managing director, told Tribune Business that merchants have shown themselves more reluctant to embrace digital payments than consumers due to historical concerns that financial “game changers” will fail to deliver the promised benefits.

Speaking as the Central Bank and its licensees prepare to roll-out a campaign to educate Bahamians on the benefit of eliminating cheque use by end-2024, he added that despite the “trepidation” Island Pay has “doubled” its number of merchant clients to around 1,500 over the past year.

Describing the reluctance of some in Bahamian society to embrace digital payments as “a good call to action”, Mr Beckles said the uptick in usage was still “moving in the right direction though maybe not at the rate we want”.

He added, though, that it was on track to double the annual amount of financial transactions it will process to “well over $200m” compared to last year’s $100m as the greater convenience, security and lower costs associated with digital payments start to take hold.

“There has been a constant, very strong uptick particularly in the last eight months from the fall of 2021,” the Island Pay chief said of digital products and payments “as things began to come back online, commercial activity increased and more people came back to work. People started looking for alternatives, so there’s been a steady level of adoption.

“We still have some space, some ground, to make up from the educational standpoint. There’s probably more trepidation from the merchant side than there is on the consumer side when you start functioning with digital wallets and Sand Dollars... We can say all along that there’s significant cost savings from digital payments, but until the consumer and business sees how that works we will get push back.”

Mr Beckles added that “the trepidation with this transition is not peculiar to The Bahamas”, but pointed to the fact that multiple countries such as South Africa and Namibia have already moved to eliminate cheque usage, with this form of payment now also increasingly rare in Europe with some states eliminating it back in the 1990s.

“In our case I think there’s a bit of trepidation because any major change, particularly in the financial space, there’s push back because people fear it’s not going to work,” he told this newspaper. “I was talking to someone the other say, and said: ‘When cheques were introduced people thought it was a game changer, and now it is no longer the game changer it was’.

“We’re at that moment in time when there’s another major game changer, which comes with trepidation, fear and uncertainty, and so our job - and we’re seeing it at Island Pay, because we’re getting more questions today than we ever did before; is it safe? Is it secure? Can we access our funds in real time? - is to educate the consumer and alleviate those fears. I don’t think the push back will last too long.”

Asked how rapidly Island Pay’s digital wallet user base is growing, Mr Beckles replied: “If I were to put it in a simple nutshell, if we had ten consumers last year we’re probably seeing an increase of five or six at this stage of the game. We now have over 50,000 Bahamians using our services on the consumer side, and on the merchant side we’ve doubled that to 1,500 compared to this time last year.”

Acknowledging that this figure may appear small compared to the total number of businesses in The Bahamas, he added: “Last year we processed over $100m in financial transactions, and this year we will be well over $200m. We’re moving in the right direction. It’s not at the rate we want, but it’s progress being made and that’s where we’re marching.

“Our biggest, best low hanging fruit is to continue to work with the Central Bank, stakeholders and the Ministry of Finance on the education narrative. What’s important is to get to people to download the app and get used to on-time payment and collection. I don’t think we’ll see a significant amount of people saying go back to cash. The benefits accruing to them are enormous.”

Mr Beckles said Island Pay is targeting a “steady” 25-30 percent annual growth in its digital wallet customers. “People may say: ‘Don’t you want more than that?’,” he told Tribune Business. “What’s important in this market is that it doesn’t matter for us. If we get another 25-30 percent that’s good. For us it’s about steady growth, manageable growth, not pushing for more than we can manage in that space.

“It helps to set the parameters for our call centre to manage what we have, and look to facilitate customer spending so that we continue to evolve and meet their needs as opposed to them meeting our needs. For a long time businesses have looked at it that way and lost out.”

Pointing out that Family Island development “cannot occur without digital solutions being part of the conversation”, the Island Pay chief asserted: “The more digital The Bahamas becomes, the easier it becomes to do business and the more attractive our destination becomes.

“Today’s investor is a digital investor. His whole life has been digital. There’s no point in him coming to The Bahamas and us expecting him to do business the old way. He expects us to be doing business his way; the new way.”