GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Tech­nol­o­gy gi­ant Mas­ter­card has an­nounced its part­ner­ship with Wi­Pay, build­ing on its strate­gic plan to evolve and de­vel­op its pres­ence in the Caribbean.

A state­ment from the com­pa­ny said this “ground break­ing part­ner­ship” is prime to reap sig­nif­i­cant gains for the re­gion, not­ing that both com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate to dri­ve greater fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in the is­lands through a suite of pay­ment and ac­cep­tance so­lu­tions.

As a part of the part­ner­ship, Wi­Pay will:

• Lever­age Mas­ter­card’s Bank in the Box so­lu­tion to em­pow­er SMEs through card ac­cep­tance. Bank in the Box is an end to end so­lu­tion for SMEs that do not ac­cept card pay­ments and that are not fi­nan­cial­ly in­clud­ed

• Part­ner with a lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion who will is­sue a Mas­ter­card pre­paid card, to strength­en lo­cal dig­i­tal ecosys­tems and fa­cil­i­tate seam­less, fast, and trans­par­ent dis­burse­ments of funds for SMEs and cit­i­zens..

• Lever­age pay­ment so­lu­tions for gov­ern­ment pro­grammes, in­clud­ing:

Court­Pay—to fa­cil­i­tate court main­te­nance dis­burse­ments such as child sup­port,

Gov­Pay—to fa­cil­i­tate pub­lic help ser­vices,

Dig­i­tal ID—EMV Card for Dig­i­tal Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Dis­burse­ments,

Speak­ing about the part­ner­ship, Marce­lo Tan­gioni, Mas­ter­card’s Caribbean Di­vi­sion Pres­i­dent said the com­pa­ny found in Wi­Pay a knowl­edge­able part­ner to bring its vi­sion to life.

He said Mas­ter­card was al­so ex­cit­ed to bring these ro­bust so­lu­tions to the mar­ket.

“This im­por­tant part­ner­ship builds on our com­mit­ment to lead the jour­ney to­wards de­vel­op­ing smarter is­lands and cash­less so­ci­eties to strength­en economies and in­crease fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion through­out the re­gion.

“This part­ner­ship is huge for the Caribbean as it al­lows Wi­Pay to ac­cel­er­ate fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion by de­liv­er­ing in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial prod­ucts to the un­banked and un­der­banked of the re­gion,” Tan­gioni added.

Ald­wyn Wayne Wi­Pay’s CEO ex­plained on a macro lev­el, the part­ner­ship en­ables WI­Pay’s re­gion­al set­tle­ment net­work to run on Mas­ter­card’s pay­ment rails, im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the CARI­COM Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my re­gion (CSME).

The col­lab­o­ra­tive so­lu­tions will launch in Ja­maica and T&T ini­tial­ly, with roll-outs in Grena­da, Guyana, Do­mini­ca, Bar­ba­dos, St Kitts, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, and in the Ba­hamas, among oth­ers in the near fu­ture.

Mas­ter­card is a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny in the glob­al pay­ments in­dus­try.

Its glob­al pay­ments pro­cess­ing net­work con­nects con­sumers, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, mer­chants, gov­ern­ments, and busi­ness­es in over 210 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries.

Wi­Pay is head­quar­tered in Trinidad & To­ba­go with op­er­a­tions in Ja­maica, Guyana and St. Lu­cia and soon to be launched in the wider Caribbean re­gion.