Well, it took them twelve more years but the banks in The Bahamas are finally waking up to e-Commerce.
Laughingly, the managing director of Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) told a Nassau Guardian reporter that an Internet banking network for businesses is “ahead of schedule” and could roll out in the next month.
“Ahead of schedule” is an interesting choice of words for a banking network that should have been introduced twelve years ago, when BahamasB2B.com first introduced e-Commerce in The Bahamas.
Unfortunately, the concept had to be shelved when Bahamian banks refused to provide online credit card processing, and the Canadian bank that was originally processing the orders could no longer do so.
“I guess BahamasB2B was twelve years ahead of it’s time,” said Niki Bright, webmaster for the nation’s #1 website.
Paul McWeeney said BOB is working “heavily” with its credit card processing entity and is testing the system for business accounts.
The announcement comes shortly after a recent presentation by BOB at the Bahamas Hotel Association’s (BHA) annual general meeting.
McWeeney said hoteliers and other tourism stakeholders are excited about the release of the e-commerce service and are taking advantage of the opportunities the Internet has to offer.
“It will be a first for the country in terms of a service for the Bahamian market,” McWeeney erroneously told Nassau Guardian reporter Jeffrey Todd, who apparently failed to check the archives of his own newspaper.
“We’ve been waiting for this for over a decade,” said Ms Bright. “We hope the banks will do this right and make the system available to all Bahamian businesses. We have numeorus companies who have asked us to implement this functionality on their websites as soon as the banks make it available,” she added.
It was way back in 2000, when BahamasB2B’s visionary founders, Duke and Lisa Wells, first started talking with the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce, the Bahamas Hotel Association (BHA) and the Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation (BAIC) about opening up e-Commerce applications to Bahamian companies in an effort to make business in The Bahamas more efficient.
At that time, BahamasB2B president Lisa Wells recognized that many of the smaller hotels, particularly on the Family Islands, were not realizing their booking potential because consumers were unable to book transactions online with a credit card.
Ms Wells owns and operates Benelda.com web design, one of the leading web design firms in the Caribbean, and has created websites for over 100 small and medium-sized companies.
The e-Commerce initiative was one of BahamasB2B’s many innovative solutions to assist Bahamian businesses in realizing their full potential. Today, with over 1,600 members, the website still leads the pack in providing business solutions to Bahamian companies.
Stuart Bowe, the current president of the BHA, said that the absence of a Bahamian-based bank with infrastructural support, along with high fees by travel agents and inconsistent or unreliable telecommunications services, have prevented Bahamian businesses from achieving full growth.
According to recent data collected by the BHA, the vast majority of small hotels surveyed from eight islands still did not accept credit cards online.
Local analysts estimate Bahamian businesses are missing out on millions in revenue through Internet sales and marketing.
Bahamas businesses interested in taking their products and services to the world can contact Niki Bright to find out how the innovative solutions offered by BahamasB2B can help take their business to a new level.
