An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Wi­Pay Group CEO chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and founder, Ald­wyn Wayne, says the re­gion­al pay­ments provider has 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, Point Fortin-born 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 the Gov­ern­ment just has to push a but­ton to fa­cil­i­tate cit­i­zens who are el­i­gi­ble to get a 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 uti­lized 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.