Despite his commitment to the concept behind Transfer Solutions Providers' (TSP) Mango Card, Shaker Rawan said that developments at the company have led him to resign as CEO and director of the board.
"The circumstance under which I left the company was a change of direction in the company that I could not be a part of," Rawan told Guardian Business.  "There was a restructuring of the TSP company which made it so that I would have to part ways with the current team, so I resigned my post as CEO and Director of the Board."
Delving a little deeper into the direction shift and restructuring at the company, Rawan said TSP chose to pursue a Bahamas-only business approach and to reduce capital investments into the business.
He had told Guardian Business in an interview earlier this year that Mango had Haiti, Jamaica and South Florida in its sights as potential markets for its "banking for the unbanked" card services.
The Bahamas-only approach was part of a move to reduce costs, according to Rawan.  The cost-cutting measures were protracting the time necessary to complete critical tasks that had a short time-frame for implementation, he said.
"When I was at Mango, we were not able to raise the moneys it required," Rawan said.  He went on to tell Guardian Business that since his resignation he has little insight into the operations and finances of the company.
Since Rawan's resignation just over three weeks ago, effective the end of August, TSP announced that it has been able to attract capital, however.  On September 20th, a local newspaper reported the company's president to have said it raised about $1.5 million - just under a third of its $5.4 million private equity placement.  He also was reported to have said international expansion plans were likely to be implemented in 12 to 18 months.
Rawan has returned to his homeland, Canada, where he said he is working on various projects with clients.

He said he still believes there is a need for, and viable business opportunity in providing banking services for the unbanked in The Bahamas and other markets.  Critical to such a business's success, however, would be the execution of the right strategy by a "very experienced" management team, according to Rawan.
He also said it would be important for the company to work with existing commercial banks "not in a competitive format, but in a synergistic way".
Asked about his reaction to the fact that three weeks after his resignation there seems to have been no formal announcement of it, Rawan expressed mixed sentiments.
"I'm surprised in the sense that it's a good policy to communicate major changes to an organization's executive team, so I'm surprised that [the company] didn't follow that format.  But at the same time, [TSP] is a private company and there is no requirement for them to make a public statement on it,"  he said.
The Mango Card is one of the services TSP offers, along with payment processing.  The card itself gives customers who do not have bank accounts access to banking services, with no annual or monthly fees and a minimal transaction cost (reported as $0.10 by Guardian Business in April).
For the unbanked, the card can be used to receive salaries electronically and for applications like insurance payments, money transfers and retail shopping.

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