Caribbean Upstart Business Of 2016

Bitt.com co-founders ink the deal with Overstock in April 2016. (Barbados Today image)

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. Dec. 28, 2016: This year, News Americas Now’s Upstart Business of the Year title goes to Bitt, a Barbados-based financial technology company that has seen tremendous growth this year.

The Hastings, Barbados company, founded in 2013, is a digital asset exchange, which owns and operates a trading platform for Bitcoin and other fiat currencies and focuses on providing access to cryptocurrencies in emerging markets.

Bitt’s platform allows traders worldwide to deposit their currency or digital assets and trade with those funds. The company’s software suite includes a digital asset exchange, a mobile money wallet, a remittance platform, and merchant payment processing tools.

The company’s goal is to persuade Caribbean island nations to adopt digital national currencies and this April it attracted a whopping USD 16 million in total investment from US company, Overstock, placing the company’s valuation at $50 million US Dollars.

“Regional small businesses find it financially prohibitive to offer online payment options to consumers and this places a drag on entrepreneurism in the Caribbean,” said Bitt CEO and Co-Founder, Gabriel Abed. “Our aim is to use cryptography and digital ledger technology to turn our regional citizens into global citizens, giving them the ability to send or receive money directly via their phones, in seconds, from all corners of the globe.”

“Bitt’s financial technology revolution will bring to consumers a faster, better, cheaper and more traceable way of banking ‒ and we now have a new, multi-billion dollar backed investor to help make this vision a reality,” said Oliver Gale, Bitt CFO and co-founder, while adding that Bitt is bringing modern financial solutions to a previously backward region without efficient settlement systems.

Overstock.com CEO Dr. Patrick M. Byrne no doubt shares that vision, noting in the Spring of 2016: “Bitt has a vision for the Caribbean of frictionless mobile cash, beginning with central banks transparently issuing digital fiat which is then exchanged using a blockchain mechanism (with proper regulatory oversight). We respect and endorse that vision, and share a common desire to see online consensual exchange flourish globally.”

Bitt is well on its way to pushing the Caribbean’s fintec sector forward and this is why it’s our pick for Upstart Caribbean Business of 2016.