The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

GREETINGS and oh boy every day it is something else challenged by, but you know it is all good. I just have a query for the probing minds and power that be.

Around 12.10pm today, Monday March 11th, 2024, and since I was right in the heart of Downtown, with an international card, bearing the Mastercard logo, decided to drop by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC-Bahamas Ltd,) in order to try and load up a Ready card obtained at SeaTac International Airport in Seattle, Washington, desire of traveling to US.

Posing the question with the banker, what do I have to do to load a Ready card? A Ready card, that is an International card, and therefore, you can only withdraw, but since we have no connection to American banks, we cannot load money onto any American card, she said. That is horrible, I said.

And but we boast of being an International Banking Jurisdiction and unable to accomplish such a basic, standard procedure transacted every day in other global business dealings, is unbelievable? I asked the banker, are you telling me that not even a Mastercard Credit Card Facility was available in the country, who might, should be able to have these transactions done, after all their card occupies a prominent position on that plastic card?

It is one thing to introduce a card business in a country (home office being foreign), but if there were no local access to conducting needs that card holders have, ought not to be given the licenses to operate in absentia?

FRANK GILBERT

Nassau,

March 11, 2024.