The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Transfer Solutions Providers (TSP), the Mango Card operator, will open its first retail location at the Mall at Marathon next month, its principals telling Tribune Business yesterday that after a more than $3 million investment to-date they were set to “ramp up” activities.

Continuing to focus on an ‘unbanked’ and ‘underbanked’ market that a McKinsey study estimated as being 54 per cent of the Bahamian population, TSP will also launch in October a service allowing persons to pay utility bills without having to visit the provider.

And, with plans to open a second Mango outlet in the Carmichael area next month, TSP has also partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on a project that will ultimately develop a ‘credit risk rating’ framework for microfinance lending in the Bahamas

Julian Francis, the former Central Bank governor who is TSP’s chairman, told Tribune Business: “We are just about to launch a presence at the Mall at Marathon. We are already installing some of the basic infrastructure that we need there, and we are going to be launching that in the early part of October.”

That location, together with the Carmichael outlet in the Universal Building, will be shared between Mango and an affiliated business, the money transfer firm, Omni Financial Services.

While staff numbers are set to increase, TSP principals could not give any specifics at this point.

But, indicating that TSP and Mango were very much back on track, Mr Francis added: “We’ve got some broader plans now. We’ve been taking a broader look at what we want to do....

“Maybe, finally, we feel we’re on the right track. We’ve invested more than $3 million in this project up to now, and that’s hard cash.

“We’ll be investing a bit more than that before we’re done, but we think we’ve found what our role in life should really be.”

And he added: “We’ve looked again at what it is we really can do in this environment, and we are moving our focus more towards producing payments solutions as opposed to operating the Mango card.

“We think we can actually put in place an infrastructure on the part of companies that need it. We can do it for them, and operate it. This is what we’re going to see as our focus going forward.”

Donald Tomlinson, TSP’s president, said the company was working on providing a full men of services/products to the Bahamas’ ‘underbanked’ and ‘unbanked’ community, including microfinance loans to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

“There’s probably at least 80,000 people out there collecting pay cheques, working and not facilitating themselves through the banking system,” Mr Tomlinson told Tribune Business, citing as an example a construction worker who merely used his bank account only to convert a cheque into cash.

“What we are looking to do is provide a total package to an underserved financial community,” he added. “Through the fact we don’t have to have a lot of bricks and mortar, we think we can provide them with a lot more affordable cost factor.”

Harvey Morris, TSP’s acting chief executive, said the last McKinsey study estimated that 54 per cent of the Bahamian people were either ‘unbanked’ or ‘underserved’ by traditional financial institutions.

While TSP’s Mango customer card base is around 10,000, not all of whom are active, and the number of merchants signed up to accept the card is 300 - 100 of whom are active - the company is currently focused on upgrading its card platform.

Mr Tomlinson told Tribune Business: “One of the things we want to offer with the Mango card is the ability for people to make payments of their various utility bills without having to drive or go there.

“So they will make their payments through the Mango card via cell phone and SMS messaging. We’re going to be launching in October the ability to pay bills via the card, SMS or the Internet. That is now developed.

“We think that with the SMS payments system and other things we have to offer, we’ll give merchants and customers good reason to use the Mango card other than think it’s the safest way to carry cash.”

And Mr Morris added: “We’re starting to ramp up. You’ll see us move faster. With these two [retail] openings you’ll see a lot happening between now and the end of the year.”