DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Wi­Pay chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ald­wyn Wayne has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that his com­pa­ny mis­han­dled Gov­ern­ment funds or was re­spon­si­ble for the re­port­ed fail­ure of the on­line fixed penal­ty no­tice pay­ment sys­tem, in­sist­ing that Wi­Pay nei­ther re­ceives nor holds pub­lic mon­ey.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Wayne said Wi­Pay func­tions sole­ly as a soft­ware provider, with all pay­ments made through its Court­Pay plat­form de­posit­ed di­rect­ly in­to gov­ern­ment-ap­proved bank ac­counts.

He said claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that Wi­Pay re­tained gov­ern­ment rev­enue were "crazy" be­cause of how gov­ern­ment pay­ment sys­tems are struc­tured.

"Wi­Pay nev­er got one dol­lar of the min­istry's mon­ey be­cause it's not set up in such a way. Even the ba­sis of the state­ment that Wi­Pay has gov­ern­ment mon­ey in it­self is crazy. That's be­cause of how gov­ern­ment pay­ments are set up. The Gov­ern­ment has to get ap­proval from Trea­sury to open a ac­count for dig­i­tal pay­ments or on­line pay­ments. Af­ter they get ap­proval from Trea­sury, they then go to one of the com­mer­cial banks, get a bank ac­count open for on­line and dig­i­tal pay­ments, and then they say, okay, Wi­Pay, we have a bank ac­count set up, we need you now to put a soft­ware on top of that ."

Wayne ex­plained that min­istries first ob­tain Trea­sury ap­proval to es­tab­lish ded­i­cat­ed ac­counts for dig­i­tal pay­ments be­fore open­ing mer­chant ac­counts at com­mer­cial banks. Wi­Pay's role, he said, is to pro­vide the soft­ware that process­es and man­ages pay­ment in­for­ma­tion rather than col­lect­ing or hold­ing the funds.

"The mon­ey goes straight in­to the Ju­di­cia­ry. That mon­ey does not come to Wi­Pay. It nev­er have and nev­er will. Be­cause you have to be a col­lec­tor of gov­ern­ment rev­enue to do so," he said.

Wayne al­so dis­missed re­ports that the fixed penal­ty no­tice pay­ment plat­form had crashed.

He said the on­line pay­ment func­tion is on­ly one fea­ture with­in the Min­istry of Trans­port's U-Turn sys­tem and that any is­sue af­fect­ing the gov­ern­ment-owned web­site would not be caused by Wi­Pay's soft­ware.

"But there's no crash. All it would take is two sec­onds to go and type in U-Turn and see that the sys­tem is still up," he said.

Wayne said Wi­Pay has pro­vid­ed on­line pay­ment ser­vices to the Gov­ern­ment since 2016 and has not ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar is­sues.

"I would just tell you for the last 10 years, we have been fine. And this is news to me that there is an is­sue and I own the com­pa­ny," he said.

Wayne fur­ther re­vealed that Wi­Pay owns the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights to Court­Pay, the plat­form used by the Ju­di­cia­ry for mak­ing and re­ceiv­ing court pay­ments in­to and out of Court.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion tak­en in Ju­ly last year, dis­cussed the ex­pan­sion of Court­Pay across ad­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment ser­vices through the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPICTT).

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh—who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for NPICTT—and Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our were con­tact­ed for com­ment but had not re­spond­ed up to pub­li­ca­tion.