The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian digital payments provider at the centre of the health travel visa controversy says it expects to gain permission to launch in two other Caribbean territories within the next six months.

Nicholas Rees, Kanoo’s chairman, told Tribune Business that the company presently has two licensing applications underway in other nations, which he declined to name, as part of its drive to “take The Bahamas to the world through technology”.

“We’re getting calls daily from major financial institutions about using our technology, investing in our technology and how we can partner in other jurisdictions,” he disclosed. “We have licensing applications ongoing in two other jurisdictions. Our goal is to take The Bahamas to the world through technology, and the first target is the Caribbean. The second is Latin America.

“We’ve put a lot into this. We’re a private company, but we’ve invested millions to-date. We’re currently raising more money to finance expansion throughout the region. We expect within the next three to six months to launch into two new territories.

“We’ve had two countries reach out to us because of our [food] gift card platform, and their desire to use it to deliver pensions and social assistance in their countries using digital cards. We’re getting attention from other countries, but in The Bahamas they’re tearing us down. I don’t understand that. We are here to make life easier for Bahamians; all Bahamians.”

Mr Rees declined to name any of the countries involved, or provide financial details on how much Kanoo is seeking to raise, citing the recent onslaught of attacks from political sources, rivals and others over the Government’s award of the health travel visa payment processing and other contracts to the company.

The Kanoo chief said he personally felt Bahamians should be able to travel back into the country without having to pay the visa fee, but Kanoo was only doing what was requested by the Government.

Asserting that the digital payments provider was receiving “less than” the 1.5 percent fee per transaction as cited by the Ministry of Tourism, Mr Rees said: “You have to pay for a travel visa when you come back into the country. I personally feel Bahamians should come back into the country [free], but it’s not for us to say. We provide the technology solution.

“We have thousands of users and hundreds of businesses today. We refer to all our business clients as the Kanoo family. We see ourselves as a band of brothers. Everybody we touch, everybody we hire, we tell them ‘welcome to the family’. We want Kanoo to be innovative, to be engaging. We don’t make money until you make money. We want to create solutions for Bahamian businesses to empower them to make money.”

Kanoo was embroiled in a political firestorm after it became caught-up in the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) attack on The Bahamas’ health travel visa system. The digital provider facilitates the visa payments on the Ministry of Tourism’s behalf, and questions surrounding the fees it was earning and why the money was not being deposited in the Government’s consolidated fund quickly surfaced.

The allegations then expanded to political favouritism and nepotism amid claims that Dr Nigel Lewis, the FNM’s national campaign co-ordinator for the upcoming general election, was a Kanoo director and that the company had won multiple other government contracts.

Mr Rees, though, last week produced Kanoo’s annual returns filed with the Registrar General’s Department to show that Dr Lewis is not a director. He holds less than a 1 percent equity stake in the company, the Kanoo chairman added, which was given as a reward for putting himself and his fellow Bahamian entrepreneurs in touch with their Atlanta-based technology partner some five years ago.

Describing the company as “politically agnostic”, with Dr Lewis’ political connections “irrelevant” to Kanoo and its business, Mr Rees said it seemed like he and his fellow investors have “made a lot of enemies since we launched”.

Besides Sand Dollar and the health travel visa, Kanoo has also won the contracts to facilitate the electronic processing of child support and other court-ordered payments, plus food assistance payments on behalf of the Ministry of Social Services and Urban Development.

However, further controversy arose when it was revealed that the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) had engaged Kanoo to facilitate the payment of tuition and registration fees by Family Island-based students. Mr Rees’ father, Olvin, is BAMSI’s deputy chair, and sources subsequently informed this newspaper he is close to the Prime Minister.

However, Mr Rees slammed social media claims of favouritism and nepotism as wholly incorrect as he disclosed that Kanoo has hired attorneys “to look into the false assertions and innuendos made” with a view to taking potential legal action against its accusers. “How many other friends does the Prime Minister have?” he asked.

He revealed that BAMSI reached out to Kanoo and other digital payment providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and “there was no contract awarded. They signed up to our merchant services platform in the same manner as all of our merchants. It’s [BAMSI] one of our smallest clients”.

Mr Rees, seeking to remove Kanoo from the political fray, told Tribune Business: “I was extremely disappointed to see the sources this information came from. Persons I had a high degree of respect and admiration for, I’m completely at a loss as to how they came to the conclusions they came to and cast the aspersions they have on such a young, unique Bahamian technology company.”

He added that there was a constant cry for greater Bahamian ownership in the economy, and for local technology companies to perform more work, and argued that the attacks on Kanoo went completely against this.

“It’s obvious to us what is happening,” added Mr Rees. “The amount of people calling me, saying: ‘Nick, keep your head up, we see what they’re doing’. We have 25 staff, 70 percent female, all-Bahamian. It’s disappointing and unsettling to them as well.

“Why do we attack the small businesses in this country because we feel they’re a threat? Why can’t we celebrate their success? One would like to put a stop to this. I don’t like politics, I don’t like being involved in this. We want them to leave me and Kanoo alone, so that we can just focus on developing technology.”