The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A digital payments provider says more than 1,500 visitors who will arrive in The Bahamas for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays have signed up to use its “tourism app”.

Jeffrey Beckles, Island Pay’s managing director, said the app will enable micro, small and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) as well as sole entrepreneurs to be paid electronically for the products and services they deliver to tourists. He explained that it was a natural extension to its existing electronic payment solution for merchants.

“Our solution at Island Pay allows, and enables, small businesses in our Family Islands to receive merchant payments as a small merchant, manage their funds and have access to the funds at the end of the day, and that is a game changer,” Mr Beckles said.

“One of the things we must keep in mind is that the tourists that are coming back to The Bahamas in this rush are digitised tourists. We can’t ignore that fact. So the longer we sit in our silo thinking that they have a pocket full of cash, we’re going to fool ourselves. It is incumbent that we take advantage of these kinds of resources.

“With the small business app, we now have a tourist app… A tourist app that can handle Sand Dollar. That’s amazing because what it allows tourists to do is to access Sand Dollar before they come to The Bahamas,” Mr Beckles added.

“What that means for the hair braider or the small merchant downtown, or on the beach, is a huge game changer because now that merchant can interact with tourists and keep that money in our local economy. That is truly what a game changer is. That’s what we’re doing at Island Pay.”

The company’s ‘tourist app’ was launched one month ago, and is available in the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. “We’ve already begun to see people download it because they’re excited. You’ll be surprised to know the number of tourists that come here and want Bahamian dollars,” Mr Beckles added.

“In a single month since we launched - we’ve been out about three-and-a-half weeks - we’ve had well over 1,500 tourists download the wallet because they plan to come here at some point during the Thanksgiving break, or the holiday break, and that’s exciting for us.”

While Island Pay’s ‘small business’ app has not proven as popular as the tourist version yet, Mr Beckles believes this will change as companies become more attuned to new ways of conducting business and seek to minimise costs associated with inflationary pressures.

Mr Beckles said: “There’s no doubt the inflation impact will be felt mostly by small businesses. I don’t think any of us are going to be insulated. But as it relates to small businesses, because we are small in nature, we do have less cushion…

“We will definitely feel that, and this is why we’ve been really advocating for small businesses to understand what’s coming in terms of the inflationary impact and how do we mitigate it. How do we make changes now before the real impact sets in?”

Companies can employ various strategies to mitigate the fall-out from a widely-predicted US recession, he added. “We try to look at the structure of the organisation, structure of the operation, and one of the greatest impact is costs. How do we make adjustments in our costs to mitigate the impact?” Mr Beckles asked.

“And then, at the same time, we still have to live. So while we’re talking about the impact of cost-cutting measures, we also need to focus on how do we expand our customer base, because we need that revenue still coming in. People still need to live, people still need services. So it’s a balancing between improving our revenue streams, expanding revenue streams and also controlling costs.”