NASSAu, BAHAMAS — While acknowledging that there have been some challenges on the International Cultural Wine and Food Festival this past weekend, executives of digital payment solutions provider Kanoo in addition to festival organizers say that the event was a “smashing success”, and an enormous step toward greater digital adoption.
Nicholas Rees, Kanoo’s chairman and co-founder, said during a press conference yesterday that the corporate has already received several expressions of interest following this week’s culture fest engagement.
Rees noted that Kanoo, which was the seller solution provider for the festival which only accepted Sand Dollar as payment, was under no circumstances averse to criticism because it seeks to enhance on its offerings.
“We welcome all criticism. We embrace criticism. We embrace change. I would love to state for the record from our perspective, the weekend was a smashing success, not without its challenges,” said Rees.
“There have been some logistical challenges by way of ingress and regress. We identified and we were capable of implement overnight technical solutions that eased the burden and truly limited the necessity for individuals to face in line,” said Rees.
“We saw adoption ahead of the event,” he continued.
“Those individuals that did were capable of fly through, they didn’t should stand in line. There was a problem for a big majority of them. The Central Bank was instrumental in making this successful. On the event, we had about 600 new wallets adopted which is important. That was only a fraction of the individuals who visited the event. The festival was monumental and a smashing success.”
Kimani Brathwaite, the corporate’s chief operating officer, who can also be a co-founder explained that the corporate made an update to its payment solution Saturday night which resulted in a better transition for patrons and led to a major boost in transaction volumes on the festival’s second day.
“On Saturday you needed to are available in with a bank card or debit to fund your band. We made an update Saturday night in order that on Sunday individuals didn’t physically should go to a loading station but could click on a link and will use their bank card or debit card without having to interact with an actual person,” said Braithwaite who also noted that existing Kanoo customers had the flexibility to link their festival bands to their mobile wallets.
The Kanoo executives also explained that while the corporate was the event’s vendor solution provider, it was also capable of load Sand Dollar into other authorized financial institution (AFI) wallets. Rees explained, “What we did find was quite a lot of persons are attempting to pay with a Suncash token on even a Kanoo token. The one thing being accepted nonetheless was the Sand Dollar.”
ICWFF chairperson Janet Johnson also touted the success of this 12 months’s event and stated that organisers are sticking with the Sand Dollar and digital payment solution going forward.
“We’re delighted that we were capable of bring the 2022 food festival. We’re more than happy with the final result of the festival. We had some challenges leading as much as it and we needed to pivot from the house of the festival -the Botanical Gardens – which has been the house for the festival for twenty-four years and discover a blueprint that fit the footprint that we would have liked,” said Johnson, who noted that confirmation that the unique venue was unavailable got here seven weeks prior to the event.
Still, Johnson said that Collins House Gardens “worked out well”. “We’re pleased that we’re a festival on the innovative, and we were delighted when Kanoo got here and asked if we might have an interest and in addition Sand Dollar. We had some challenges, but we knew what the tip goal was and we would have liked to begin somewhere. We’re moving to a digital platform globally and I’m delighted that The Bahamas is ahead of the curve.”
There have been 126 vendors who participated within the event nonetheless Johnson said that organizers don’t yet have a tally of what number of individuals attended the event.
