WiPay celebrated its fifth anniversary with a bang at the AC Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. The event was spectacular and brought out some of Jamaica’s biggest names in the financial industry – and saw the likes of Shaggy in attendance as well.

WiPay was founded right here in TT by Point Fortin’s very own Aldwyn Wayne.

However, owing to the less than enabling environment for innovation in TT, Wayne was forced to move the headquarters of WiPay out of TT and set up roots in Jamaica in 2021. Since the move, he has also created the Caribbean’s first neo (digital) bank, Colour Bank, which is based in Miami.

The event saw three key solutions launched.

The new Volt Network, the Colour Bank app and the Caribbean's first tokenised credit card.

Let me first break down the Volt Network and the key problems it is solving. This will give you a greater appreciation of the solutions.

The Caribbean is connected in almost every way, but financially disconnected. This region possesses ten unique currencies, but no inter-island settlement in the Caribbean. Transactions originating in TT need to go to a correspondent bank in the US before it settles in another country. But this can be solved.

Introducing the Volt Network. It will connect over 50,000 websites and point-of-sale terminals across the Caribbean and process individual, government and corporation transactions.

WiPay's privately owned network has created a unified settlement network for the Caribbean. This solves one of the greatest financial problems in the Caribbean: cross-border settlement. Each Caribbean country has its own currency that trades primarily with the US dollar. By pegging a digital token to the US dollar, transactions from one country to another can maintain the expected value, because local currencies maintain their value against the US currency.

This digital token, which exists on the Volt network, will facilitate inter-island transactions without the need for correspondent banking. The Volt Network, through its partnership with WiPay, will replace WiPay’s Digital Fiat Solutions, which is used by several governments and private-sector entities across the Caribbean.

The Volt Network can also solve interbank US-dollar settlement by creating a real-time settlement rather than two-five-day wired transfers.

But how does the Volt Network solve this? The digital token is a smart contract built on a proof-of-stake distributed ledger system, in which the owner of the digital token earns a fraction of every transaction.

Volt's Digital token is registered in Grenada, which has just passed legislation to regulate digital currency. This stable token paired with the Volt network will create the Caribbean's first unified currency.

The new Colour Bank app and tokenised card will allow Caribbean businesses to download the app and now allow every business to get paid with credit cards.

Your cell phone will now be turned into a point-of-sale terminal with tap-on-glass tech