Helping Caribbean retailers bounce back with mobile ePOS

Lockdowns are easing around the world, and businesses are eager to open up—so we’ve teamed up with our partner Starnet to help Caribbean retailers hit the ground running with mobile Electronic Point-of-Sale (ePOS) solutions!

With its island paradise vistas and a £42bn tourism industry, the Caribbean is the most tourism-reliant region in the world, and its retail and hospitality industries are a massive part of its economy.

Until the pandemic, most Caribbean islands were cash-driven. Now shops, hotels, restaurants and bars across the region are pivoting and going cashless with mobile ePOS (electronic point-of-sale) solutions, to minimise contact and open up as soon as possible.

But it’s difficult to deploy mobile ePOS there: some islands are full of rough terrain with mountains and dense forests. Others are home to remote towns and resorts that lack the infrastructure to support fixed-line connectivity. On top of that, hurricane season in the Caribbean can bring storms that threaten both telephone lines and cell towers.

What began as a 2000 SIM project quickly ramped up to 7700 SIMs, as mobile ePOS solutions became a staple for reopening businesses. Using our Multi-network SIMs meant our partner Starnet didn’t have to check network coverage at each location, turning a tricky region-wide rollout into an easy task.

It also future proofed the solution for any changes down the line, if networks start or stop covering certain spots. And the mobile ePOS devices are protected against outages—if a network faces an outage from a storm or otherwise, the devices will use our Multi-Network SIMs to connect to the next strongest available network; so retailers and restaurants can keep trading no matter what.

To fit the seasonal nature of the tourism industry, we gave the devices a flexible shared data pool. They’ll be able to easily handle activity peaks during holiday seasons, and retailers won’t overpay during the quieter months. The solution also scales automatically, with every added Multi-network SIM contributing to the data pool, so Starnet doesn’t need to worry about having sufficient data as the rollout increases.

Lastly, we delivered the SIMs active and ready to go—but they didn’t start billing until Starnet used the free data allowance to check everything is working, before sending them out to their customers.

‘With tourism and retail being so important to the Caribbean economy, we were happy to help retailers bounce back from the pandemic with mobile ePOS,’ said our Sales Director, Bernie McPhillips. ‘Retailers all around the world need IoT and mobile connectivity support right now, so it’s the perfect time for the Channel to save the day with those services.’