The Grena­da Gov­ern­ment says it will con­tin­ue to en­gage the Trinidad-based Wi­Pay Caribbean to pro­vide cash­less elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions to re­cip­i­ents of the school­books and uni­form pro­gramme, al­though the is­land’s reg­u­la­to­ry body for fi­nan­cial ser­vices has re­voked the com­pa­ny’s li­cense to op­er­ate in Grena­da.

A no­tice dat­ed Ju­ly 3, 2024 on the Grena­da Au­thor­i­ty for the Reg­u­la­tion of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions (GARFIN) web­site said that the li­cence is­sued to Wi­Pay had been re­voked mak­ing it in el­i­gi­ble to op­er­ate in Grena­da.

“In ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 33 (1) (a) of the Mon­ey Ser­vices Busi­ness Act Cap 198A, the Grena­da Au­thor­i­ty for the Reg­u­la­tion of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions (GARFIN), as the Au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for Mon­ey Ser­vices Busi­ness, here­by re­vokes the li­cence of Wi­Pay Grena­da Ltd with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. The gen­er­al pub­lic, in­clud­ing per­sons in­ter­est­ed in do­ing busi­ness with this en­ti­ty are asked to note the con­tents of this No­tice and be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly,” said the no­tice.

But Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter David An­drews told a news con­fer­ence that the Dick­on Mitchell gov­ern­ment through the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will Part­ner with Wi­Pay Caribbean for the Dig­i­tal Stu­dent Grant As­sis­tance Pro­gramme and agents of the com­pa­ny are set to re­ceive train­ing in the up­com­ing days.

An­drews said that the min­istry would is­sue to grant ben­e­fi­cia­ries, a sys­tem gen­er­at­ed QR codes, which would be re­deemable at par­tic­i­pat­ing mer­chants for school sup­plies and uni­forms, elim­i­nat­ing the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with print­ing cheques.

Asked about the re­cent re­vo­ca­tion of the Wi­Pay li­cense to op­er­ate in Grena­da, An­drews told re­porters that the com­pa­ny does not need to be cer­ti­fied by GARFIN to op­er­ate in Grena­da.

“As it re­lates to Wi­Pay, we en­gaged GARFIN and we en­gaged Wi­Pay as well, what we did dis­cov­er is that Wi­Pay just pro­vides a plat­form for cash­less trans­ac­tion, they do not need to be cer­ti­fied by GARFIN.

“We learned that and so there was no need for them to be re­cer­ti­fied, that is what we were told by the of­fi­cials from GARFIN,” he told re­porters.

An­drews fur­ther ex­plained that Wi­Pay is cer­ti­fied by the East­ern Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change (ECSE).

“So, we felt com­fort­able be­ing guid­ed by GARFIN that they were still in a very good po­si­tion to con­tin­ue of­fer­ing the ser­vices be­cause they didn’t do di­rect cash trans­ac­tions and so the GARFIN reg­u­la­tions did not need to have them cer­ti­fied and they did not have to re­new that doc­u­ment,” he said.

Launched in Oc­to­ber 2001 and op­er­at­ing out of St Kitts, the ECSE is the re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket es­tab­lished by the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) and li­censed un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act of 2001 – a uni­form re­gion­al body of leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ties.

Last week, Wi­Pay signed a new mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar, three-year con­tract with the gov­ern­ment of Grena­da to digi­tise pay­ments on the is­land.

Called Gov­Pay, the agree­ment came in­to ef­fect on Thurs­day with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, for its book grant pro­gramme. Gov­Pay al­lows the min­istry to in­stant­ly send mon­ey to its cit­i­zens to pur­chase books, on­line or in store.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, the founder and CEO of Wi­Pay, Point Fortin-born Ald­wyn Wayne said Wi­Pay has a great re­la­tion­ship with all the ad­min­is­tra­tions in Grena­da, es­pe­cial­ly the cur­rent one. En­ter­ing in­to this con­tract for three years is an in­di­ca­tion of such.

“So, you know, the mis­in­formed would al­ways be mis­in­formed. My job is to fo­cus on pro­vid­ing the best val­ue that I can to this re­gion. And, the gov­ern­ment of Grena­da, I know, is very ap­pre­cia­tive of the so­lu­tions along with the part­ner­ships that we’ve had over the last cou­ple of years and for the next fore­see­able fu­ture,” the busi­ness­man said.

In ex­plain­ing how the Gov­Pay plat­form op­er­ates, Wayne said some­one in Grena­da’s Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion just has to push a but­ton to fa­cil­i­tate cit­i­zens who are el­i­gi­ble to get the grant. The mon­ey shows up on the re­cip­i­ent’s phone, al­low­ing the hold­er to go to any book­stores to pur­chase books and school sup­plies.

“It’s kind of a big deal know­ing that we built the ap­pli­ca­tion, we built the so­lu­tion, it’s been vet­ted over the last cou­ple of years by dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions, and now to en­ter a long-term con­tract with the gov­ern­ment, it’s awe­some,” Wayne said.

On its web­site, Wi­Pay states that the grant tech­nol­o­gy has been utilised by NGO’s, state en­ti­ties, and gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties across the Caribbean.  

One no­table achieve­ment in­cludes the suc­cess­ful dis­tri­b­u­tion of a JM$4 bil­lion grant pay­out so­lu­tion in Ja­maica, serv­ing more than 40,000 peo­ple in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Labour and So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty (MLSS) in Ja­maica dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.  

Lever­ag­ing QR code-based dis­burse­ments, re­cip­i­ents could re­deem funds at var­i­ous mer­chant lo­ca­tions across the is­land, fur­ther un­der­scor­ing Wi­Pay’s track record in ef­fec­tive grant dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Al­so, the pay­ments com­pa­ny said this so­lu­tion not on­ly stream­lines the dis­tri­b­u­tion process, but al­so ad­dress­es con­cerns re­lat­ed to time, cost, theft and mis­use of funds.

Ex­pand­ing of­fer­ings

In June, Wi­Pay an­nounced sev­er­al de­vel­op­ments that would ex­pand the com­pa­ny’s of­fer­ings to peo­ple in the Caribbean.

Wi­Pay said it is trans­form­ing the re­mit­tance land­scape in the re­gion with a busi­ness-to-cus­tomer prod­uct, the COLOUR App.

In part­ner­ship with RIA, the world’s sec­ond-largest re­mit­tance com­pa­ny, Wi­Pay said it had spent the last 24 months de­vel­op­ing di­rect-to-wal­let and di­rect-to-bank ac­count re­mit­tance so­lu­tions.

“The COLOUR App, de­signed to make re­mit­tance more ac­ces­si­ble and ef­fi­cient, is set to change the way peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceive mon­ey. In­stead of stand­ing in line to col­lect re­mit­tances, users can now re­ceive funds di­rect­ly in­to their ac­counts from es­tab­lished re­mit­tance com­pa­nies like RIA and Pay­Pal, mak­ing it eas­i­er for friends and fam­i­ly abroad to send mon­ey in­stant­ly,” ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the pay­ment so­lu­tions com­pa­ny.

“Wi­Pay is blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al with the new to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the re­mit­tance space. With COLOUR, users can re­ceive mon­ey in­stant­ly from es­tab­lished re­mit­tance com­pa­nies like RIA, as well as from Pay­Pal and oth­er pop­u­lar pay­ment ser­vices,” said John Mol­len­thiel, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer and coun­try head for T&T at Wi­Pay.

Al­so in June, Wi­Pay an­nounced a part­ner­ship with Aero­post, a lead­ing glob­al lo­gis­tics tech­nol­o­gy provider, that al­lows cus­tomers in Trinidad and To­ba­go to use their lo­cal cur­ren­cy (TTD) for in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions, over­com­ing for­eign ex­change (FX) con­straints and en­hanc­ing pay­ment op­tions for cross-bor­der e-com­merce.

“We un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties our cus­tomers face with lim­it­ed USD ac­cess due to FX con­straints,” said Gillian Ro­driguez Clark, Aero­post di­rec­tor for the East­ern Caribbean. “Our part­ner­ship with Wi­Pay al­lows Trinida­di­ans to shop glob­al­ly us­ing their lo­cal cur­ren­cy, mak­ing cross-bor­der e-com­merce more ac­ces­si­ble and con­ve­nient for both our B2C and B2B clients. This new ser­vice, along with ben­e­fits like our US Tax Free Ad­dress, Has­sle Free Re­turns Pro­gram, Mo­bile App, ac­tu­al weight-based charges, and Smart Lock­er Last Mile So­lu­tion, sets us apart and em­pow­ers our com­mu­ni­ties by con­nect­ing them to glob­al mar­kets.”

Wi­Pay ac­quired Trav­elele.com, a Mi­a­mi-based on­line trav­el com­pa­ny, in June, out­lin­ing that the move will al­low Wi­Pay to ex­pand the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of its COLOUR App Mar­ket­place, bring­ing sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to Caribbean trav­ellers and po­si­tion­ing it as a ma­jor com­peti­tor to es­tab­lished trav­el book­ing plat­forms like Ex­pe­dia, Ho­tels.com, and Triva­go.