Vincentian financial technology (fintech) startup, Payswif, is working astutely to secure its market leadership having achieved yet another milestone. With over half a million dollars already generated through the digital payment platform and some 2000 plus subscribers, since their April launch earlier this year, the introduction of the PaySwif kiosk is a definite game changer.
PaySwif has unveiled its first kiosk which would ultimately allow for customers to not only recharge their digital wallets but also withdraw monies from their associated bank accounts.
“We recognized some of the issues persons are having with our system in terms of recharging … so we decided that we would build a kiosk,” to help in that regard, co-founder Marlo Browne told Asbert News Network.
This particular milestone comes several months before the anticipated December 2020 deadline, an added bonus to the locally based, owned and operated fintech company and customers alike.
The company opted to build its prototype from as much locally available materials as could be sourced and once the concept was finalized the production phase graduated from a wooden model to metal construct that was made possible through the collaborative efforts of local partners.
“One of the challenges with designing a kiosk and building it here in St. Vincent is that you have limited access to resources – fabrication is a challenge because you want to make sure it is secure. So fabricating it from metal, steel that’s a challenge here because we don’t have a lot of businesses who specialize in that and the businesses that do some kind of metal work don’t do it on the scale that we would want to use for our kiosk.
“We constructed a few prototypes in wood just to get the idea about its structure and then we began working on the electronics …. We were able to contact Eastern Caribbean Metals Industries Ltd and we were able to work along with Mr. Porter and a few of his employees down there to start the metal fabrication process,” CEO and co-founder Jamal Glasgow told us.
“It’s good to know that even though we weren’t able to get all the resources that we wanted there are persons that would aid us in getting to this stage and I believe if we continue we’d get to a further stage,” Browne supplied while underscoring how challenging the coding side of the exercise turned out to be.
It was the cost of acquiring and importing ready-made kiosks that prompted the entrepreneurs to explore building their own. Having figured out how to build a working prototype the young visionaries are setting their sights on being able to supply other businesses with customized kiosks to suit their needs.
“We wanted to create a kiosk that was cost effective for us and eventually for small business here as well,” Glasgow said. Later in the interview he reiterated his company’s commitment to the Vincentian small business community, “one of the main reasons why we created PaySwif was to actually empower a lot of small businesses to move their services digitally….”
Once up and running a newer generation of PaySwif kiosks would be strategically placed at retail friendly outlets nationwide for easy access.
For now though the prototype would be housed at PaySwif’s headquarters in St. Hill Plaza, Kingstown and persons are encouraged to stop by to help with its further testing.
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