Ald­wyn Wayne is all about find­ing so­lu­tions.

The founder and CEO of Wi­Pay has al­so re­cent­ly es­tab­lished Colour Bank, a US-based neobank which is fo­cused on dri­ving fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion for the ur­ban cul­ture by pro­vid­ing bank­ing and fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions that meet the com­mu­ni­ty at its point of need.

Ac­cord­ing to Wayne, his team’s goal is sim­ple: pro­vide prod­ucts that fix ur­ban prob­lems.

“Colour Bank was found­ed on fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion just like Wi­Pay was. But with a fo­cus on our cul­ture. If you see our card here, it says ‘For our Cul­ture’ on the card. Why that is im­por­tant is be­cause of our ap­proach in the Caribbean and mat­ter of fact for this cul­ture around the world,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.”

“There has nev­er been a fo­cus on us and there is nev­er fo­cus on our cul­ture. We have nev­er met our prob­lems or our needs at a place where we need it. (Of­ten there’s) a prod­uct that you can­not qual­i­fy for. Imag­ine you are work­ing at a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, whether it is a loan com­pa­ny or bank and you may not even qual­i­fy for a loan. So that colour doesn’t fit you, it doesn’t fit us.”

This gap prompt­ed him to cre­ate Colour Bank, which he said was specif­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed to ad­dress the needs of the di­as­po­ra in the Unit­ed States.

“We have a spon­sor bank that will have a char­ter in all 50 states giv­ing us the abil­i­ty to give bank ac­counts, chequing ac­counts, deb­it ac­counts and pro­vide the FDIC-as­sured ac­counts up to like $200,000,” he ex­plained.

As a US-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, the bank’s fea­tures are not cur­rent­ly in­te­grat­ed with Caribbean fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, how­ev­er it is af­fil­i­at­ed with Wi­Pay al­low­ing for a cer­tain lev­el of con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“Colour Bank has part­ner­ships with Wi­Pay, so some of the ser­vices that Wi­Pay of­fers in the Caribbean such as bill pay­ments, trans­fers pro­cess­ing on­line, you can now ac­cess that via Colour Bank in the States. So imag­ine I live in Wyoming, I can pay a T&TEC bill. I can pay a bill that Wi­Pay has a part­ner­ship agree­ment with. So Wi­Pay and Colour Bank would have a re­la­tion­ship or a part­ner­ship that al­lows for some of its ser­vices that ex­ist in the Caribbean to be used in the US,” he said.

By de­f­i­n­i­tion, a neobank is a type of di­rect bank that op­er­ates ex­clu­sive­ly on­line with­out tra­di­tion­al phys­i­cal branch net­works.

Wayne ex­plained that Colour chose this mod­el as it al­lowed for them to fo­cus on cer­tain bank­ing prod­ucts in a spe­cif­ic mar­ket or niche.

Through this con­fig­u­ra­tion, Colour Bank could of­fer ser­vices specif­i­cal­ly for its tar­get de­mo­graph­ic.

“In a bank, there is a wide range of bank­ing prod­ucts that a bank pro­vides, from loans to mort­gages, to ac­counts. In our case, our neobank will be fo­cus­ing on just pro­vid­ing sim­ple deb­it ac­counts mak­ing it easy for our cus­tomers to cre­ate an ac­count on­line, get a deb­it ac­count and do sim­ple bank­ing trans­ac­tions. Es­sen­tial­ly a fo­cused prod­uct that is pro­vid­ed by a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, a bank, but we now mar­ket in a spe­cif­ic way to meet our cus­tomers at their point of need,” he said.

Wayne said he would not be op­posed to bring­ing a bank like Colour to the Caribbean, once the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work is in place for it to hap­pen.

“Once reg­u­la­tions per­mit, and neobank is some­thing that the re­spec­tive reg­u­la­tors have leg­is­la­tion for, for sure. The Caribbean is where we were found­ed. We would love to have a Colour Bank branch in the Caribbean once the reg­u­la­tions per­mit,” said Wayne.

Last week, Colour Bank part­nered with the Na­tion­al Sher­iffs’ As­so­ci­a­tion to ad­vance the as­so­ci­a­tion’s IG­NITE (In­mate Growth Nat­u­ral­ly and In­ten­tion­al­ly Through Ed­u­ca­tion) pro­gramme, a na­tion­wide jail ini­tia­tive that pre­pares in­mates for re­lease and helps make jails safer.

The ini­tia­tive saw Wayne and his team vis­it Flint, Michi­gan, again in­tend­ing to pro­vide a po­ten­tial so­lu­tion to a gen­er­a­tional prob­lem.

“We part­nered with the NSA, the Na­tion­al Sher­iffs’ As­so­ci­a­tion to pro­vide deb­it cards and bank ac­counts for in­mates who are about to grad­u­ate, and rein­te­grate back in­to so­ci­ety. If they take a fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy course and they grad­u­ate from that fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy course we give them a bank ac­count we give them a pre-loaded card,” he said.

“So when you get out of the prison you are now bet­ter equipped to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety be­cause you took a fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy course, we gave you a lit­tle start­ing point, a cou­ple of hun­dred bucks so no need to go find a way to make mon­ey, you have mon­ey as soon as you get out. Rent a room, pay for di­a­pers, pay for milk for your daugh­ter that you have not seen for six months.”

He said of­ten with­out such pro­grammes re­leased in­mates find them­selves trapped in a cy­cle with­out the prop­er guid­ance or launch­pad to get their lives.

Wayne felt this part­ner­ship al­lowed them to help break this chain.

He said, “Hu­man­ise the process for re­ward­ing you for tak­ing a fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy course which should help you in the long run by giv­ing you a bank ac­count, by giv­ing you start-up mon­ey on that ac­count.”

Al­so present at the es­tab­lish­ment of the part­ner­ship was in­ter­na­tion­al record­ing artist and Colour Bank di­rec­tor Orville Richard Bur­rell, bet­ter known as Shag­gy who al­so ex­pressed op­ti­mism that the IG­NITE pro­gramme would make pos­i­tive change. “I’m so proud to be as­so­ci­at­ed with such a for­ward-look­ing and in­no­v­a­tive pro­gramme,” he said. “This pro­gramme shows peo­ple that their lives have val­ue, that we care about them, and they can suc­ceed and lead pos­i­tive lives.”

Wayne said he hoped more peo­ple would recog­nise the in­tent of his teams at both Wi­Pay and Colour, as he hoped to con­tin­ue ad­dress­ing is­sues in the wider Caribbean so­ci­ety. He how­ev­er be­lieved T&T was mak­ing progress in terms of fin­tech.

He said, “The last cou­ple of years we have tak­en some great steps with the cre­ation of the TTIFC here in Trinidad, some of the ini­tia­tives like Wi­Pay and oth­er com­pa­nies like Wi­Pay are do­ing. The pri­vate sec­tor, gov­ern­ment, NGOs, we are see­ing steps in the right di­rec­tion in the last cou­ple years. Could more be done? Yes. But we are trend­ing in the right di­rec­tion.”