Colour unveils super Caribbean payment app

Colour, a super app designed by WiPay, is the company's first mobile application consumer product.

WiPay’s focus in the beginning was simply processing payments via your website and sending out digital invoices to clients anywhere in the world so they could use their bank cards to pay you.

Since those days, WiPay has spent years being the much-needed force of change that the region has needed.

I’ve gone on record before as saying we no longer have technology problems, but people and legal problems that we must deal with to elevate the Caribbean region.

WiPay is a perfect example of this.

The technology they used to build the solution is state-of-the-art and is being utilised in a lot of first-world countries.

I’m sure they could have dropped some of what we will talk about today years ago, but they have in many ways been the company to work with governments and central banks across the Caribbean region to challenge and change many of the laws (if any) that govern the digital-payments space.

Being a pioneer comes with a long teething process, a couple of false starts and some setbacks, but if it’s one thing that I’ve come to learn about the founder of WiPay, Aldwyn Wayne: he is a consummate student and understands what’s needed to get change to happen.

WiPay is now in multiple countries in the Caribbean, the US, Ghana and Colombia.

I had the privilege of flying out to Medellin, Colombia, for the launch of WiPay Colombia. As a digital strategist who spends a lot of time teaching e-commerce and setting up payment mechanisms for businesses, this trip opened my eyes and reminded me of a few things.

As a region, we are very far behind our Latin American neighbours.

Whilst walking through Communa 13, I stopped to buy churros from a street vendor and as I was about to pull out cash to pay, he asked me, “How do you want to pay?”

I was confused, because I am so accustomed to all street vendors in TT only accepting cash so I asked him what my options were.

He then showed me his card machine, I tapped my debit card to pay him, he texted me the receipt, and off I went.

Because we are so far behind in the region, unless you travel, you truly don’t understand how bad it is.

We also need the public to understand that there needs to be a catalyst in the Caribbean to go on a mission to innovate and work with the regulators to catch up and ultimately change laws to allow these new technologies to work in the Caribbean.

That company has been WiPay.

Years of work, innovating and working with the regulators to make the necessary changes have been needed to pave the way for the new Colour services.

After all the cyber breaches that have happened this year, I was telling Wayne that people have become skittish about using their credit cards and apprehensive about digital payments. We then had a few meetings about what I think could ease the minds of customers and we came up with the ability to use the Colour card as a firewall to protect your bank-issued cards when shopping online.

I love that your business can send digital invoices via WhatsApp or share a scannable QR code and your clients can pay you.

Businesses don’t need to have their clients download another app to do business with them.

These are the tools we need ahead of Christmas and the Carnival season!

The Colour card is subject to regulatory approval based on country, and certain features may be limited, based on your country.

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with Caribbean businesses to build their digital presence and monetise their platforms.

Learn more at KeronRose.com or listen to the Digipreneur FM podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google Podcast.