Lead­ing re­gion­al pay­ment so­lu­tions provider, Wi­Pay Caribbean, has put its plans to list on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change (JSE) on hold un­til next year, while it press­es ahead with form­ing new part­ner­ships and deep­en­ing its en­gage­ment with the re­mit­tance mar­ket.

In an in­ter­view on Fri­day, Wi­Pay’s founder and CEO, Ald­wyn Wayne, told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that what the com­pa­ny was go­ing to raise on the JSE was low­er than it had ini­tial­ly thought.

“We were go­ing to get list­ed on the Ju­nior Mar­ket, which is capped at about US$5 mil­lion. That was not some­thing we thought would bring val­ue, so the ul­ti­mate goal now is to grow and list on a much larg­er stock mar­ket. Not now, but we are hop­ing that by the end of 2025, we could see what that fin­ish line looks like,” said Wayne.

For now, the fin­ish line would in­volve a list­ing on an in­ter­na­tion­al stock ex­change.

In the mean­time, Wi­Pay is look­ing to dri­ve or­gan­ic growth as the pay­ment provider an­nounced a part­ner­ship last week with Aero­post, the lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny that is a lead­ing provider of couri­er and sky­box ser­vices.

The part­ner­ship would en­able their lo­cal cus­tomers to use the TT-dol­lar for in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions, over­com­ing for­eign ex­change con­straints and en­hanc­ing pay­ment op­tions for cross-bor­der e-com­merce, the com­pa­nies said in a news re­lease.

“We un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties our cus­tomers face with lim­it­ed US-dol­lar ac­cess due to for­eign ex­change 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 pro­gramme, 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.”

“This part­ner­ship is a sig­nif­i­cant step in our mis­sion to ex­pand pay­ment op­tions and fa­cil­i­tate seam­less trans­ac­tions for con­sumers in the re­gion,” said Kib­we Mc­Gann, chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer (CMO) for Wi­Pay Group. “We’re ex­cit­ed to work with Aero­post and en­able Trinida­di­an cus­tomers to shop freely with­out for­eign ex­change con­straints, align­ing them with the rest of the Caribbean.”

The com­pa­nies al­so an­nounced that the TT-dol­lar part­ner­ship is just the ini­tial phase of their col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“We’re ex­cit­ed to re­veal that phase two will in­tro­duce a co-brand­ed card, al­low­ing cus­tomers to shop through Aero­post and or­der from their favourite stores like Temu, SHEIN, and Ama­zon. This ser­vice will be avail­able to all Aero­post cus­tomers through the COLOUR app,” said John Mol­len­thiel, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer for Wi­Pay Group.

Us­ing the COLOUR app, Wi­Pay al­so an­nounced ear­li­er this month that it has strength­ened its part­ner­ship with RIA, the world’s sec­ond-largest re­mit­tance com­pa­ny.

Wi­Pay and Ria have spent the last 24 months de­vel­op­ing di­rect-to-wal­let and di­rect-to-bank ac­count re­mit­tance so­lu­tions.

The de­vel­op­ments will al­low peo­ple in T&T to col­lect re­mit­tance funds di­rect­ly in­to their ac­counts, in­stead of stand­ing in bank queues. The monies can be sent by es­tab­lished re­mit­tance com­pa­nies like RIA, Pay­Pal and oth­er pay­ment ser­vices.

Wi­Pay’s fo­cus for Q3 and Q4 will be on the re­gion­al re­mit­tance mar­ket, in­clud­ing lu­cra­tive mar­kets like Ja­maica and Colom­bia where Wi­Pay al­ready op­er­ates. The po­ten­tial for COLOUR in these re­gions is im­mense, the com­pa­ny said in a news re­lease.

Apart from an app, COLOUR is al­so a phys­i­cal card and a vir­tu­al card, al­low­ing re­mit­tance funds to be trans­ferred to the cards.

“The COLOUR app is de­signed to bring fi­nan­cial free­dom and in­clu­siv­i­ty to every user. We are proud to pro­vide a ser­vice that bridges tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial sys­tems, en­sur­ing that every­one can par­tic­i­pate in the mod­ern econ­o­my,” Wayne said.