Caribbean mo­bile pay­ment so­lu­tions and fin­tech com­pa­ny, Wi­Pay, which was found­ed by Point Fortin’s Ald­wyn Wayne, launched its Colour mo­bile app in Medillin, Colom­bia last Thurs­day, to co­in­cide with the com­pa­ny’s sixth Wi­Day.

Wi­Pay told the Busi­ness Guardian that the Colour app, which pro­vides users with a dig­i­tal wal­let and an en­abled deb­it card, is slat­ed for launch in all Wi­Pay ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing T&T.

“It in­tro­duces a deb­it card with ver­sa­tile fea­tures, al­low­ing on­line pur­chas­es, POS pay­ments, and ATM cash with­drawals. Once an in­di­vid­ual has a ver­i­fied Wi­Pay ac­count, ac­quir­ing the app is as sim­ple as down­load­ing it from the iOS App Store or Google Play store,” said Wi­Pay.

“There are no bu­reau­crat­ic ob­sta­cles hin­der­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of Colour in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Asked about the launch process in Colom­bia, Wi­Pay said that it en­com­passed se­cur­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and form­ing an agree­ment with a cus­to­di­al bank. This aligns with the stan­dard pro­ce­dures for launch­ing a fin­tech busi­ness in the coun­try.

Colour has al­ready been soft-launched in the US, but the over­all launch will co­in­cide with the world­wide launch of Colour, which has been test­ed at Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, At­lanta Jerk Fest and var­i­ous Caribbean North Amer­i­can-based events.

Lau­ra Cristi­na Par­ra Echavar­ría, Wi­Pay’s Colom­bian coun­try man­ag­er, said the app of­fers a range of fea­tures such as a 100 per cent dig­i­tal Visa deb­it card, a mar­ket­place for es­sen­tial ser­vices, free mon­ey trans­fers be­tween users, the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to re­ceive in­ter­na­tion­al re­mit­tances and an in­no­v­a­tive re­fer­ral pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at the launch of Colour in Colom­bia last week, Wi­Pay CEO, Ald­wyn Wayne, un­der­scored the com­pa­ny’s fun­da­men­tal vi­sion to em­pow­er in­di­vid­u­als and dri­ve fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion. He was es­pe­cial­ly ex­cit­ed and proud of the promise that Wi­Pay Colom­bia and Colour bring.

“Wi­Pay is here to re­shape the fu­ture, con­nect­ing Afro-Colom­bian com­mu­ni­ties with the glob­al econ­o­my. Em­bed­ded with­in the app is Wi­Pay’s VOLT Net­work. This will al­low any­one with a Wi­Pay ac­count to send and re­ceive mon­ey be­tween Ghana, the Unit­ed States, Colom­bia, and Wi­Pay Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries with­in min­utes, and at a frac­tion of lega­cy in­sti­tu­tion fees,” said Wayne.

Kib­we Mc­Gann, Wi­Pay Group CMO, spoke about the com­pa­ny’s op­ti­mism for the Colom­bian mar­ket. He em­pha­sized how this op­ti­mism was hinged on the Colour App and an ag­gres­sive re­fer­ral pro­gram. Peo­ple can re­fer the Colour App to users and earn 5000 pe­sos (US$1) per re­fer­ral. Once a per­son signs up for Colour and com­pletes the ba­sic KYC process, they au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­ceive a bank ac­count and a vir­tu­al Colour card pow­ered by VISA. With­in the app, peo­ple can pay util­i­ties, do peer-to-peer trans­fers, and ac­cept or send re­mit­tance pay­ments.

Wi­Day is an an­nu­al event host­ed by Wi­Pay, which marks the launch of the com­pa­ny.