Business Made Easy at Agric with Belize Bank’s Ekyash
Belize Bank’s digital wallet, E-kyash was also a big feature at the National Agriculture and Trade Show in Belmopan. Taking a selfie with Raymoni mascot gave visitors an opportunity to win an E-kyash package valued at one hundred dollars. And if you visited the booth to cash-in, you got double the funds, as much as thirty dollars. But it was the merchants who made the ease of doing business through E-kyash seamless. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
If you were at the showgrounds over the weekend, you would have noticed these signs attached to many of the booths. Ekyash – the Belize Bank’s digital wallet made doing business during the event safe and easy.
Michelle Guzman
Michelle Guzman, Retail Manager, Belize Bank Belmopan
“Ekyash, no cash, no problem. Ekyash is a digital wallet that the Belize Bank launched last year in August. We are the first bank; we are always the first and we are the first one to launch an electronic wallet in Belize and it has been an ongoing rave and we have been sustaining our wallet ever since we started last year. Ekyash is convenient, it is safe so on the show grounds instead of walking around with cash in your pocket, we can transform it into electronic cash. We have teamed up with these merchants here. Our wallet is so dynamic that when you download your cash into the electronic form, you could visit these merchants and pay for your purchases with ease. So if you lose your cash, the physical cash, no headaches with Ekyash. You could lose the phone, but you still have your cash.”
Her food truck can often times be spotted in your neck of the woods, but Miss Debs is usually crowded with patrons trying to get their orders in for the juicy burgers, the cheesy fries and more. For some time now, she has had to improve the level of service to her customers and Miss Debs says Ekyash is simply reliable.
Deborah Baldwin
Deborah Baldwin, Proprietor, Miss Debs Food Truck
“Especially since COVID and people adapting to change, we had more demand for credit cards and stuff. We were always a cash business. We started saying we have to use a credit card. What I don’t like about a credit card machine, although I have a really wonderful bank, is that it costs me money. So out of my ten dollars, now I’m having to pay a dollar or sometimes more to pay for my stuff. That’s hard because I can’t pass that on to the customer. The nice thing with Ekyash, it is cheaper and it’s easy and everybody has a phone – let’s pretend like we don’t, but everybody does – and you have your phone there and like the other day, our credit card machine’s not working, well we have Ekyash. You always have your phone, it’s simple, you scan a QR code it goes through and it is there. And then on my end as a merchant, I can just take that out into my bank or I can pay my monthly bills. So it is nice, it is convenient. I am not a fan of digital currency, to be honest; I like paper. But this is the way things change, this is how life goes. We have to adapt and if we are gonna survive, we have to adapt.”
Also at the showgrounds was Marie Sharp, herself. Her delicious pepper sauces were flying off the shelves and shoppers who did not have cash on them just pulled out there phones and with a scan of the QR code, funds were transferred.
Marie Sharp
Marie Sharp, Proprietor, Marie Sharp Fine Foods
“Well you know we are now up to fourteen different sauces. We have the pineapple which is the one that we give a percentage of the sales to Haven House. We do mango, we do garlic. My newest one is the scorpion pepper; that is very, very hot. So we are up to fourteen total. We do Ekyash at the company, but not for gift shop because otherwise we don’t retail anything. So the gift shop, they do the Ekyash. They asked us to do it out here so we have been doing it since morning.”
Duane Moody
“It’s going good?”
Marie Sharp
“Yes, it’s working.”
If you visited the Belize Bank booth at the show grounds, the staff would quickly register you for Ekyash.
Michelle Guzman
“You come in, you could double up your wallet, you could double up your cash. So instead of walking around with the physical cash, that cash can multiple in seconds. So you give me your twenty dollars and I give you back twenty dollars. So instead of having twenty dollars in your hand, you have forty dollars in your hand, up to a total of thirty dollars. So if you do thirty dollars, you have sixty dollars. Isn’t that awesome?”
Duane Moody for News Five.
