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Says it will break the wheel of traditional banking

Caribbean fintech company WiPay is aiming to continue spreading its footprint across the Caribbean and is determined to make financial transactions easier and cheaper for people of the region.

Speaking at an event held at the AC Hotel in St Andrew earlier this week, Aldwyn Wayne, founder and CEO of WiPay, said that together with its partners, including MasterCard, the company intends to help Caribbean people navigate the path to financial freedom.

WiPay is celebrating its fifth anniversary and has already made a number of innovative marks, more notably working with Jamaican vendors with ENDS during the pandemic and collaborating with the government in Trinidad to make public sector payments easier.

The company intends to be the leader in a scalable, social partnership that ushers in a cashless society not monopolised by banking institutions. It wants to be at the vanguard of digital and financial inclusion.

Kibwe McGann, country manager for WiPay Jamaica, at the event said that the current process of banking is onerous on people and that intermediaries take too much money from customers.

He illustrated his point by moving a J$5,000 note around the room that makes stops in the US where a fee is taken, then in a bank in Jamaica where another fee is taken, all the while this process takes days making transferring funds arduous.

Our Today spoke with Wayne, the Trinidadian businessman who created the online payment solution, at the AC Marriott event.

“We started WiPay to help with financial inclusion. While building out across the Caribbean, we realised we have a bigger mission which is to create a network for individuals who are not in the banking system – in other words we are targeting the great unbanked. We give people who are unbanked or underbanked the tools to make payments online.

“Look around this conference room. You see vendors and artisans with QR codes which serve the same function as point-of-sale (POS) machines. In the next five years we are going to connect every Caribbean island on one flat platform with no fees, allowing them to move money to whomever they want to. It will be liberating,” said Wayne.

The WiPay boss note that the Treaty of Chaguaramas was an impediment to moving money across the Caribbean. He said he intends to change all that and see to it that people of the region can move money around freely.

“Money will be able to move from Trinidad to Morant Point and there will be no fees,” declared Wayne.

It was an audacious move to establish a payment platform that challenges traditional banking and set in motion the evolution of financial transactions.

So what drove Wayne?

“ We didn’t get up one day and say, ‘Hey, we are going to build a solution and this is what you are going to use. We listened to the people and asked what are their problems and how can we fix them. Many artisans and vendors cannot afford to pay for a point-of-sale machine, so we can get around that by giving them a solution that does not require electricity or a battery and there is no fee. That’s how we do it. We understand problems and build solutions to fix those problems.”

“It’s the banks job to go figure out their business, we are not worried about them. Our business is to create this new eco-system that allows for inclusion.”

Aldwyn Wayne, founder and CEO of WiPay

So how does he see digital financial solutions in the Caribbean?

Already there have been a number of cybersecurity breaches – scamming is now part of culture and who should be the gatekeepers? Does WiPay not pose a threat to established banks?

“It’s the banks job to go figure out their business, we are not worried about them. Our business is to create this new eco-system that allows for inclusion. We are seeing people who never participated in the financial system now doing so because we gave them the opportunity to participate. We are focused on what we have to do which is to link every individual in the Caribbean to move money and goods and services easily and freely and that’s how we are going to grow as a society. The region is going to become our house.”

Wayne has most definitely thrown down the gauntlet.

He continued: “I think our generation has broken the wheel. Looking across this room today, I see Lynks, C-Pay, WiPay all these fintech companies popping up. Why? Because we created a blueprint. People are seeing a fintech company being successful in Jamaica. We did ENDS, we did a project with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. These are things that are normally done by huge multinational companies.

“We have inspired companies to be like us. I am very happy to see what we have created over the last five years.

“People said this could not be done in the Caribbean. We did it. I love it.”

WiPay is now in 19 countries (including Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, St Lucia, Grenada, Haiti, Cayman, the United States and Ghana). Its app for Jamaica is awaiting Bank of Jamaica regulatory approval.