NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A Bahamian digital payments provider yesterday acknowledged that more must be done to educate Bahamians on the use of digital wallets as this nation moves aggressively towards a cashless environment.
Jeffrey Beckles, Island Pay’s managing director, while addressing a REV/Cable Bahamas Think Beyond Webinar Series on the benefits of digital transformation, noted: “I think digital wallets are the way of today and certainly the future.
“We are not going to go back to a pro-cash environment. The global community and The Bahamas will be moving very consistently and aggressively towards that end and it will have tremendous benefits to all of us.”
Beckles added: “We have to do a lot more in a collaborative way to educate Bahamians on the importance of having a digital wallet, how it will make your life more convenient in terms of being able to track and manage your finances more easily.
“The reality is that fintech has come to change the way we do banking and all of our other financial services that have been provided traditionally over the years. That is a reality that we can’t get away from. We can argue and say we don’t like it, but that is the way forward.”
The Central Bank has noted that recent surveys indicate the public requires assurances around the safety of conducting online transactions.
It added that authorized financial institutions (AFI) are required to complete robust and intensive cybersecurity assessments by an independent international firm before receiving approval to integrate the Central Bank’s digital currency with their custom applications.
Beckles said yesterday: “Bahamians, by and large, while we are tech-savvy, still require some significant education so that it is not viewed as something that someone or a company is trying to impose upon us.
“The reality of it is that the country is moving to a digital platform with the Sand Dollar. It’s not a matter of ‘whether I want this or not’ but rather than when it rolls out.”
