CelePay, the Bahamian-owned company that allows users to transfer money using only their cell phones, is very close to signing on a banking partner - a key step to the concept going mainstream.
Founded by six Bahamian investors, the $500,000 start-up also plans to sell cash cards on the street so customers can purchase BTC minutes.
Byron Fawknotson, the CEO of CelePay, said both of these steps will help bring the service to the masses.
"Beginning this week, CelePay is going to make sure you can buy BTC minutes directly on your phone," he said. "All you have to do is load money on the phone and request the minutes. We are also in discussions with a banking partner."

The fledging company is also in discussions with the Central Bank, Fawknotson added, to ensure the platform meets regulatory standards. CelePay is just coming off its testing phase with College of the Bahamas (COB), where the founders engaged more than 400 students and gave away $3,000 so they could test-drive the service.
"There was clearly tremendous interest there," he told Guardian Business.
"We expect over the next six months we'll have at least 10,000 on the system once the trial period is done."
And as one test run at COB ends, another is set to begin.
Fawknotson said, together with a local radio station 94FM, CelePay plans to give away $25,000 this week through a game show whereby they win money for their cell-phone accounts.
"We're basically giving away $25,000 and saying to people that using your phone to deal with money and drive commerce is the future," he explained.
Whereas at the moment CelePay is not linked with bank accounts, that will soon change, he said. Right now, customers can send a maximum of $300 to other cell phones through the CelePay network. The company takes 1 percent of the total amount for the service.
Text message money transfers is a trend catching out elsewhere in the world.
In The Philippines, a country of nearly 90 million people and more than 7,000 islands, the technology is especially useful. Similarly, The Bahamas could greatly benefit from the service as transactions go back and forth between the islands.
Going forward, CelePay hopes to link the cell phone transfers directly with bank accounts, bringing much greater efficiency to the current banking system.

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