GEISHA ALON­ZO

The no­tion that T&T can’t catch up with the rest of the world in terms of tech­nol­o­gy was yes­ter­day re­fut­ed by Am­Cham TT CEO Ni­rad Tewarie who said this na­tion has the po­ten­tial to leapfrog oth­er coun­tries.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal leap­grog­ging is hap­pen­ing all around,” he said in an ad­dress at the launch of Wi­Pay, a new cash­less pay­ment sys­tem at Dig­i­cel Imax Cin­e­ma, One Wood­brook place.

Tewarie point­ed out that for every ten per cent in­crease in mo­bile phone pen­e­tra­tion in poor coun­tries, CDP growth per per­son speed up in 0.8-1.2 per­cent­age points a year.

“How­ev­er, to fa­cil­i­tate tech­no­log­i­cal leapfrog­ging, we need to trans­form our­selves from a so­ci­ety that asks ‘why’ to a so­ci­ety that asks ‘why not?’” he said.

He added that there was need for a fun­da­men­tal shift in think­ing, which would change the way we do busi­ness, so that T&T be­comes a “why not” so­ci­ety

Tewarie won­dered why the coun­try could not com­mit to en­tre­prenur­ial ideas, use tech­nol­o­gy for greater so­cial in­clu­sion and so­cial jus­tice and pro­mote crit­i­cal think­ing in schools.

He said: “Such a mind­set must be sup­port­ed by co-or­di­nat­ed pol­i­cy mea­sures that en­able the ‘why not’ en­tre­pre­neurs to ac­cess what they need to ef­fect change. This is not to say there should be no reg­u­la­tion, but reg­u­la­tions should on­ly ex­ist if there is a ma­te­r­i­al pub­lic safe­ty con­cern.

“Oth­er­wise, we should be en­abled to take risks and in­no­vate. This is, af­ter all, the best en­vi­ron­ment for cre­ation.”

Tewarie ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to “work to­wards be­ing a peo­ple and a coun­try open to the ex­panse of pos­si­bil­i­ty: in tech­nol­o­gy and in life. Let us make our­selves a coun­try of why not.”

The Wi­Pay sys­tem al­lows pay­ments to be made to any­one at any­time and any­where.

CEO Ald­wyn Wayne ex­plained: “What we’re launch­ing is a per­son­al ap­pli­ca­tion as well as our busi­ness hard­ware pay­ment.

“The Wi­Pay app al­lows in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es—even small busi­ness­es—to make pay­ments to each oth­er at any­time. I can take out my phone and pay some­one for land­scap­ing or babysit­ting with­out even see­ing them and that mon­ey will go straight in­to their ac­count.”

The app al­lows users to load, pay, trans­fer and de­posit funds with all the ex­ist­ing elec­tron­ic de­vices of pay­ment and caters to 80 per cent of the di­as­po­ra that may not have a cred­it or deb­it card. The sys­tem al­so pro­vides the op­tion of go­ing to a lot­to booth to pur­chase a Wi­Pay cred­it vouch­er, scan it with the app down­loaded on a phone so that mon­ey can go di­rect­ly to the per­son’s bank ac­count.

Wayne said such ini­tia­tives are es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant at a time when more and more peo­ple are car­ry­ing around less cash.

He said the Wi­Pay plat­form takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the lack of cred­it card pen­e­tra­tion in T&T and the re­gion.

Wi­pay Fi­nan­cial is based in Port-of-Spain and pro­vides a range of on­line/of­fline and elec­tron­ic fi­nan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices.