SurePay (Barbados) Limited says it can no longer absorb the rising costs associated with its operations as the Barbados Consumer Empowerment Network (BCEN) raises concerns that a proposed fee could place an additional burden on consumers.
SurePay director Anthony Yearwood responded yesterday to questions surrounding a notice sent to the company’s partners advising them about changes linked to the introduction of a 30-cent VAT-inclusive End-User Convenience Fee on cash and cheque payments made over the counter.
The February 24 notice, which was made available to the Weekend Nation, indicated that a reduction in the Cash Management Fee charged by SurePay was “contingent on and tied to” the implementation of the new fee.
BCEN has called for greater clarification on the changes, suggesting the move might shift costs from businesses to consumers.
However, Yearwood said the company was not forcing any new arrangement on its partners.
“Our focus is in terms of our own viability. We have stakeholders, which are the consumer, our billers and our agents and everything we’re doing right now is to make sure that we and all of our stakeholders can continue to be viable,” he said.
Yearwood added the company had absorbed a significant portion of its operational costs, but this approach had become increasingly difficult to maintain.
“At the end of the day, it’s a business that has to remain viable and it can’t remain viable by absorbing all the costs in itself. There’s only so much that we can absorb and pass on to our billers and we also have to be aware of what we are passing on to the consumer. We absorb what we can and we pass on a significant portion to our billers but now we are passing on a component to the consumer. We are asking the consumer to take on a very small portion,” he said.
BCEN, however, believes the structure of the proposed change raises important questions about how costs are distributed across the system.
“Of particular concern to BCEN, the conditional structure of the proposed fee change. The reduction in SurePay’s Cash Management Fee appears to depend on the introduction of the new consumer fee. BCEN is of the view that this raises questions about whether the cost of the service is being
shifted from institutional partners to individual consumers,” wrote BCEN executive chairman Maureen Holder.
The consumer advocacy organisation added that if businesses or billers are paying less while customers pay more, the move could represent a rebalancing of fees within the system that ultimately shifts the burden onto households. Concerns have been raised about accessibility following the recent closure of the SurePay outlet at Jordans Supermarket in Fitts Village, St James.
Holder said the combination of new transaction fees and the loss of convenient payment locations could make it more difficult for vulnerable Barbadians to pay their bills.
“BCEN is raising serious concerns about recent changes to bill payment services across the island, warning that the combined effect of new transaction fees and the reduction of convenient access points is likely to make it more difficult and more costly for vulnerable Barbadians to pay essential bills,” Holder said.
However, Yearwood stressed that the closure of the Fitts Village outlet had nothing to do with the new fee structure.
According to him, the decision was made by the supermarket itself.
“Jordans said they were not getting the level of traffic to justify continuing having a SurePay there but they continue to have one in their Fairchild Street location,” he said.
Yearwood noted that SurePay continues to maintain a strong presence across the island.
“For more than two decades, SurePay has delivered a valuable service to the Barbadian consumer. It is more than a simple convenience, it saves people money and time by not having to pay their bills at different locations. As we have previously outlined, circumstances beyond our control require us to introduce a modest consumer fee to ensure that we can continue to deliver the service consumers have come to expect,” he said. (CA)
