The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian payment solutions provider aims to add a further five locations by the end of August, completing its nationwide coverage with 35 "touch points" following a "banner" first year.

Barry Malcolm, Sun Cash's chief executive, told Tribune Business yesterday that the brand, which falls under the Sun Island Transfers company, remains focused on building a complete payments platform to serve the entire Bahamas.

"The end of this month will actually make 12 months since Sun Island Transfers has been in operation. We started our services in The Bahamas last year, focusing on the roll-out of Western Union. We have had a banner year in rolling out the Western Union services country-wide," said Mr Malcolm.

"Sun Island Transfers has two brands; one is Western Union, and the other is Sun Cash. We rolled out Western Union for very important reasons. The first reason is that it was a well-known brand, and secondly, introducing the brand back into The Bahamas would give us locus standi and some prominence as a player in the international money transfer market.

"Also, Western Union has compliance and operating structures in place that are known worldwide. It gave our Sun Island Transfers company the opportunity to implement, manage and understand those services and, more importantly, transfer those structures into Sun Cash," he continued.

"By the end of August we will be on every island in the country. We will have at least 35 "touch points" country-wide. By that, I mean these are Sun Cash operated enterprises. Right now, 25-30 are already opened. Mr Malcolm said that with roughly three persons employed per outlet, that works out to a 75-90 person-strong workforce.

He added that Sun Island Transfers has spent the last two years working on its electronic payments platform and meeting all regulatory requirements. "Every dollar that moves across our payments platform is accounted for to the Central Bank," Mr Malcolm said.

"Every dollar that moves across our payment platform runs through our system where we evaluate and understand the transactions. We have invested a tremendous amount of money in this service. There is quite a lot that can be done on our platform.

"We thought that if we tried to roll-out all of our services right now, it would be overwhelming. What we are doing is the same way we took Western Union and rolled it out, so that you can send money to anywhere in the world from one of our outlets. We are doing the same thing with our B-dollar platform, where you can send money to anywhere in the Bahamas. We are focusing right now, starting this month, on just our send money services."

Mr Malcolm added: "We want Bahamians to be able to send money anywhere. You can go to any one of our stores and the other stores, and send money. There are a whole lot of services other than just sending money we can provide.

"You can pay bills, you can make purchases, you can buy tickets, you can do top-ups. We will roll those out systematically. Once people get comfortable with us in sending money, the other services will be rolled out."