BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos–Bitt, the Bar­ba­dos based fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny has closed its Se­ries A in­vest­ment round with a stag­gered in­vest­ment from re­tail gi­ant Over­stock.com of US$16 mil­lion, plac­ing the com­pa­ny's val­u­a­tion at US$50 mil­lion.

"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 block chain mech­a­nism (with prop­er reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight)." said Over­stock.com CEO Dr Patrick M Byrne. "We re­spect and en­dorse that vi­sion, and share a com­mon de­sire to see on­line con­sen­su­al ex­change flour­ish glob­al­ly."

"One love," Byrne added.

The in­vest­ment was an­nounced at a me­dia con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos at­tend­ed by prin­ci­pals from both Bitt.com and Over­stock.com, in ad­di­tion to dig­ni­taries from var­i­ous Caribbean na­tions.

For its part, Bitt.com in­tends to use the pro­ceeds from the in­vest­ment to fur­ther its goal of build­ing a fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem in the Caribbean that reme­dies the is­sues which peo­ple in the re­gion ex­pe­ri­ence dai­ly, in­clud­ing high fric­tion­al fees from banks and mon­ey ser­vices op­er­a­tions that make send­ing mon­ey in and out of the re­gion cum­ber­some and cost­ly.

"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."

In Feb­ru­ary Bitt launched a digi­tised Bar­ba­di­an dol­lar on the bit­coin blockchain. The com­pa­ny in­tends to digi­tise all of the fi­at cur­ren­cies found in the Caribbean and place them on the blockchain so they can be eas­i­ly trad­ed be­tween the is­lands, bring­ing mod­ern so­lu­tions to a re­gion his­tor­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed by in­ef­fi­cient ex­change and set­tle­ment sys­tems.

"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. "Bitt is bring­ing mod­ern fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions to a re­gion long de­nied ef­fi­cient set­tle­ment sys­tems."

Bitt will use the new­ly se­cured fund­ing to fur­ther de­vel­op its soft­ware suite which in­cludes a dig­i­tal as­set ex­change, a mo­bile mon­ey wal­let, a re­mit­tance plat­form, and mer­chant pay­ment pro­cess­ing tools. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Bitt will rapid­ly ex­pand, grow­ing its staff to meet the goals of pro­vid­ing a top-qual­i­ty ser­vice that will en­com­pass the en­tire Caribbean re­gion. Over­stock will add to this growth via shared learn­ing and the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of its ex­ist­ing tech team.

Bitt is the first Caribbean start­up of its kind to at­tract such ma­jor fund­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

"It is a vote of con­fi­dence in the en­tire re­gion," said Abed, "Too of­ten re­gion­al en­ti­ties are con­sid­ered to sim­ply be 'on-par' with or play­ing 'catch-up' to their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts, Bitt is not part of this im­i­ta­tion game. We are world-lead­ing. The stan­dards we are set­ting here are be­ing adopt­ed by the wider com­mu­ni­ty. We, and this re­gion, are the fo­cal point of the con­ver­sa­tion."

Al­so in at­ten­dance was the Hon. Christo­pher Sinck­ler, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Bar­ba­dos) who gave the new part­ner­ship his, "and the gov­ern­ment's full sup­port," re­fer­ring to the an­nounce­ment as an his­toric event of "na­tion­al ad­vance­ment" for Bar­ba­dos. "Ladies and gen­tle­men, wel­come to the fu­ture," he added.

Prin­ci­pal Bitt in­vestor Pe­ter George, rep­re­sent­ing T&T in­vest­ment firm Avatar Cap­i­tal, host­ed the an­nounce­ment. Pressed for com­ment he said: "Over­stock.com has al­ways been at the fore­front of cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy as it seeks to ex­pand its reach to cus­tomers both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and glob­al­ly. Patrick (Byrne) is a deeply prin­ci­pled man who has bat­tled re­lent­less­ly to lev­el the play­ing field, and who has not been afraid to blaze new trails. I could not have en­vi­sioned a bet­ter fit for Bitt than this."