By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A digital wallet provider is leading the way on the transformation of the interface for the Sand Dollar mobile app and wallet.

Sean Smith, SunCash's business development manager, told Tribune Business that the work they have been doing with the Central Bank on ensuring the Sand Dollar’s interface is more user friendly is proof positive that they have the leading strategy on developing the digital wallet and currency space.

The Central Bank of The Bahamas announced the Sand Dollar mobile wallet is undergoing a “facelift” in order to create a smoother interface and promote a better user experience, with a public release expected in September.

This facelift will include new features like self-service tools for safe onboarding of users and secure wallet recovery.

Mr Smith said: “With the mobile app, what you have is the other providers essentially have two wallets. We always say to people, if you were reach in to your back pocket or your front pocket and pull out your wallet, you normally only carry one wallet.

“But if you check if you check all the providers, they have their own digital currency as one wallet and they have another for the Sand Dollar and they have to transfer from their digital wallet to the Sand Dollar wallet, but with SunCash we have created a process for easy adoption, we've done it where it's one wallet and essentially it's basically a Sand Dollar driven wallet, which makes digital currency transfer a whole lot easier.”

Because SunCash has over 65,000 Sand Dollar users and over 1,500 businesses that use the SunCash wallet services, they have been first and foremost in leading the transformation of the adoption of the Sand Dollar and this new change in the wallet interface with the end user. “We're leading the amount of transactions in Sand Dollar as a company and leading the volume of transactions in Sand Dollar, and also too the number of merchants that we have on because the key is to have on a large amount of merchants. There are number of merchants that are actually accepting this today where we have where you can go to the gas station, and which is gas in Sand Dollar right from the pump without coming out of your car has done that. That's the first in the world. Nobody else has done that,” Mr Smith said.

There has been a “significant amount of resources", dedicated to the Family Islands to ensure that businesses use the Sand Dollar more frequently while having access to the financial services they need.

While the Sand Dollar is currently undergoing upgrades, SunCash is there to help the Central Bank “refine” its system in the limited capacity that they have been allowed to. “You have a version one and version two and version three. The first thing we want to say that’s changed is that in order for you to conduct a transaction under the old platform, it was in seven steps so now the goal is, we've decreased that seven steps to three steps,” Mr Smith assured.

While SunCash is not saying they are officially helping the Central Bank in making the changes to the Sand Dollar interface, Mr Smith said: “The work we have done so far and the amount of people we have onboarded makes our position undeniable on what customers want from the Sand Dollar app."

He added: “We're the ones who have processed most of the Sand Dollar transactions, the majority of the Sand Dollar transactions that's been processed in the system.

“The majority of the liquidity is out in the Sand Dollar, we're the ones that have facilitated most of the liquidity and I think that that has happened primarily because our ability to adapt to the needs of the community for implementation and integration into the community.

“So, the same way we lead the customers in terms of our ability to create adoption strategies with just a regular digital platform, we've been able to transition that into adoption with the Sand Dollar and so we've been able to utilise and make suggestions and recommendations on changes for the interface to allow for a greater adoption for Sand Dollar.”