When en­tre­pre­neur Mark Pereira de­cid­ed to re­turn home from Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, to build a fin­tech com­pa­ny, he didn’t look for a safe­ty net.

He built one him­self.

“I in­vest­ed over US$200,000, about $1.36 mil­lion, of my own sav­ings,” said Pereira, who grew up in Diego Mar­tin and is a Fa­ti­ma Col­lege alum­nus.

“I moved my head­quar­ters from Syd­ney to Trinidad be­cause I want­ed to help build the en­tire tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tem here” he said

That per­son­al in­vest­ment be­came WamNow Tech­nolo­gies, known to most as Wam, a dig­i­tal wal­let plat­form de­signed to make pay­ments sim­ple, fast, and in­clu­sive for every cit­i­zen. The com­pa­ny was of­fi­cial­ly launched at a func­tion at the The Worx, on Long Cir­cu­lar Road in Mar­aval, last Thurs­day.

Wam’s sto­ry is root­ed in Pereira’s con­vic­tion that T&T could be­come a se­ri­ous play­er in re­gion­al fin­tech if some­one was will­ing to take the first leap.

“Ini­tial­ly, I came to Trinidad to bet­ter the en­tire tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tem,” he ex­plained. “Wam is one piece of that pie along with the co-work­ing space you’re in to­day.”

In 2022, Pereira be­gan de­vel­op­ing Wam us­ing his sav­ings from years of tech en­tre­pre­neur­ship abroad. The ear­ly costs were sig­nif­i­cant.

“It takes about half a mil­lion TT dol­lars just to get a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence from the Cen­tral Bank. As a small com­pa­ny with big dreams, those were mas­sive hur­dles to over­come.”

Yet the founder in­sists the point wasn’t sim­ply to launch an­oth­er fin­tech app. It was to prove that world-class tech­nol­o­gy could be built, reg­u­lat­ed, and scaled from T&T.

By mid-2025, that vi­sion be­gan to take shape. That fol­lowed the Cen­tral Bank pro­vi­sion­al­ly reg­is­ter­ing WamNow Tech­nolo­gies in De­cem­ber 2024 as an e-mon­ey is­suer an ini­tial six-month pe­ri­od.

That move, he in­di­cat­ed, placed it among the coun­try’s few reg­u­lat­ed dig­i­tal-pay­ment op­er­a­tors, a mile­stone for both Wam and the lo­cal fin­tech land­scape.

“We had nu­mer­ous con­ver­sa­tions with min­is­ters and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” Pereira said. “With the tenac­i­ty of an en­tre­pre­neur to reach out and be in­ten­tion­al, we built those ini­tial bridges. That’s how we got to this point.”

The founder stat­ed that it cul­mi­nat­ed in a defin­ing mo­ment when Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, per­son­al­ly vis­it­ed Wam’s of­fices to an­nounce that the com­pa­ny would serve as the wal­let part­ner for the Na­tion­al Pay­ments and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny.

Pereira not­ed that while many dig­i­tal wal­lets chase com­plex fea­tures, Wam is laser-fo­cused on us­abil­i­ty.

“With Wam, we in­ten­tion­al­ly fo­cus on ease of use, mak­ing the hard things sim­ple,” Pereira ex­plains. “We groom the in­ter­face so cus­tomers are on­board­ed with­in min­utes, and they can start re­ceiv­ing pay­ments al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.”

The com­pa­ny’s de­sign phi­los­o­phy is root­ed in cus­tomer ob­ses­sion.

“We’re ob­sessed with user feed­back,” he said. “That helps us tai­lor the app to them, while our busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and tech­nol­o­gy teams ab­stract away the com­plex­i­ty need­ed to make pay­ments easy.”

The WAM app has been live since May 2025, af­ter ex­ten­sive test­ing and pi­lot phas­es.

Users can top up via bank trans­fer or through phys­i­cal agents at no cost. With­drawals to bank ac­counts car­ry a $1 fee, and mer­chant trans­ac­tions are charged two per cent, low­er than stan­dard card-pro­cess­ing rates.

“We’ve kept fees low be­cause the goal is fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion,” Pereira stressed. “We don’t want cost to be a bar­ri­er for any­one.”

Wam’s rise, he said, co­in­cides with a shift­ing pol­i­cy land­scape.

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill 2025 stirred de­bate in the fin­tech sec­tor, as it ini­tial­ly ap­peared to re­strict cer­tain dig­i­tal-as­set ac­tiv­i­ties.

But Pereira sees signs of progress rather than pan­ic.

“The ini­tial con­ver­sa­tions were about short­en­ing the mora­to­ri­um and cre­at­ing a sand­box for fin­techs like mine to op­er­ate un­der the vir­tu­al-as­set li­cence,” he ex­plains.

“What’s promis­ing is the way the gov­ern­ment has treat­ed the sit­u­a­tion. There’s a re­al line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and that pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship we were al­ways look­ing for.”

He em­pha­sised that the goal isn’t to ban cryp­tocur­ren­cy, but to reg­u­late it re­spon­si­bly.

“The aim is to pre­vent il­le­git­i­mate ac­tors from lead­ing cit­i­zens in­to risky in­vest­ment schemes. It’s not about ban­ning; it’s about en­abling.”

He be­lieves that the col­lab­o­ra­tion now tak­ing shape be­tween pol­i­cy­mak­ers and in­no­va­tors could soon place Trinidad and To­ba­go “at the fore­front of re­gion­al fin­tech in­no­va­tion.”

“The bill may not re­flect its fi­nal form yet, but giv­en the con­ver­sa­tions we’re hav­ing with the gov­ern­ment, we know an en­abling frame­work is com­ing.”

Pereira al­so wel­comed re­cent fis­cal mea­sures that sup­port dig­i­tal pay­ments and in­no­va­tion.

“I was ex­treme­ly pleased about the bud­get in terms of fin­tech. Es­pe­cial­ly with the for­ma­tion of the Na­tion­al Pay­ments and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny, which is a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for us.”

He wants to see the in­tro­duc­tion of a reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box, a con­trolled test­ing space where fin­tech start-ups can in­no­vate safe­ly un­der over­sight.

“That would open the door for more in­di­vid­u­als to build tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions,” he said. “The bud­get, as it stands, is an en­abling one. It’s cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem of op­por­tu­ni­ty for fin­techs and in­no­va­tors.”

For Pereira, these poli­cies aren’t ab­stract. They trans­late di­rect­ly in­to new ways for cit­i­zens and small busi­ness­es to trans­act, grow, and par­tic­i­pate in a more mod­ern econ­o­my.

“We’re see­ing a breath of fresh air,” he out­lined. “Banks are more open to col­lab­o­ra­tion. The en­abling frame­work the gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed will def­i­nite­ly in­creased part­ner­ships be­tween fin­techs and banks.”

He point­ed out that build­ing a reg­u­lat­ed fin­tech com­pa­ny in a de­vel­op­ing mar­ket comes with hur­dles: high com­pli­ance costs, lim­it­ed ac­cess to lo­cal ven­ture cap­i­tal, and cau­tious in­vestor sen­ti­ment.

“Our in­vest­ment ecosys­tem isn’t as de­vel­oped as in for­eign mar­kets,” Pereira ad­mits. “We’ve had to boot­strap and con­sult to keep things go­ing.”

Still, he views his ex­pe­ri­ence as a nec­es­sary first step, one that could pave the way for oth­ers.

“Our goal is to cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for the coun­try so that oth­ers can do the same,” he says. “We hope the next founder be­hind us won’t have to make such mas­sive ex­pen­di­tures, or if they do, there’ll be a vi­brant ven­ture-cap­i­tal ecosys­tem wait­ing for them.”

Pereira’s WamNow sto­ry mir­rors a broad­er move­ment in T&T, the slow but steady tran­si­tion to­ward a cash-light, dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed econ­o­my.

From gov­ern­ment e-pay­ments to mer­chant QR codes, the shift is hap­pen­ing. What’s still miss­ing, he be­lieves, is mo­men­tum and lo­cal own­er­ship of that in­no­va­tion.

“I came here to build some­thing last­ing,” he says. “We have in­cred­i­ble tal­ent and po­ten­tial in Trinidad. We just need to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for it to thrive.”

That en­vi­ron­ment, Pereira in­sists, in­cludes col­lab­o­ra­tion among gov­ern­ment, banks and fin­techs, not com­pe­ti­tion be­tween them.

“These are bank­ing op­er­a­tions, and banks have their own things to man­age,” he de­tailed. “But col­lab­o­ra­tion is the key. We’re see­ing op­ti­mism now that banks are en­gag­ing, and the gov­ern­ment is en­abling. That’s how we all move for­ward.”

WAM’s jour­ney is still un­fold­ing. With the Cen­tral Bank li­cence se­cured and part­ner­ships form­ing un­der the na­tion­al pay­ments frame­work, the com­pa­ny is poised for growth and for in­flu­ence.

Its suc­cess could set the tone for fu­ture lo­cal start-ups seek­ing to op­er­ate in a tight­ly reg­u­lat­ed yet op­por­tu­ni­ty-rich space.

Pereira, ever the en­tre­pre­neur, re­mains fo­cused not just on prof­its, but on progress.

“Through Wam, we’re build­ing more than an app,” he added. “We’re build­ing trust in tech­nol­o­gy and be­lief that it can come from right here in T&T.”