WiPay Online Payment Processing

WiPay has been growing phenomenally since inception in 2016 towards its mission to solve the challenges the Caribbean has been facing with digital payments and the lack of ‘financial inclusion’.

WiPay isn’t a financial institution and doesn’t hold $ on the users’ behalf. Funds are held by existing regulated financial institutions.

WiPay is a payment aggregator and technically not a gateway, i.e they do no processing themselves. Their payment processor is First Atlantic Commerce. When an order is paid by credit card via WiPay payment method on the checkout page, you’ll see the URL change from the online store’s URL as the browser redirects to what’s called the Hosted Payment Page (HPP) on FAC’s secure server to enter the credit card number.

The process is the same for all WiPay accounts and the funds collected from multiple transactions on behalf of the various online stores are deposited to WiPay’s FAC account and then to their bank account. That’s the ‘aggregate’ from which WiPay distributes to net funds (ie. less the processing and transaction fees) to each merchant which will be refelcted in their WiPay balance. With one click that balance can be transferred to the bank account that was specified on sign-up.

FUN FACT #1: WiPay boasts over 5,000 account sign-ups and their WiPay ID numbering system for account holders is simple sequential starting from 1. Forward Multimedia’s ID is 4.

WiPay for Trinidad & Tobago & Caribbean online stores

WiPay markets as a Caribbean solution. As a home grown T&T company, WiPay actually came to the rescue at the right time. Despite FAC’s availability, its cost is prohibitive for the majority of Trinis and without WiPay, growth of E-Commerce in Trinidad & Tobago would have remained at snail’s pace. Credit to WiPay for providing the shot in the arm the industry needed.

WiPay has kept moving forward and evolving, adding more products like the Zwillo app to get paid via email or social media, and their smart terminal to make and accept payments at the point of sale. Their most recent addition, announced November 2019, is most relevant here— their ‘Rebel Visa Debit Card’ which is described later down this page.

Accept credit cards standard, same as you’re accustomed to as a customer. The only difference is the change in URL that won’t have the store’s domain but ‘firstatlantic.com’ instead.

This Hosted Payment Page (HPP) system is used by all banks and is the only form offered. Ideally, the merchant would prefer to have the customer stay on the website without changing the URL but this requires expensive, frequent server scans and much more PCI Compliance and hence was a non-starter from the get-go.

This may or may not be an issue for skeptical Trinis and their penchant for paranoia when it comes to using their credit cards online. There’s nothing WiPay nor FAC can do about this.
On the payment options listed on the checkout page you’ll see WiPay Voucher. The customer needs to have their voucher in hand, i.e. the voucher would have been purchased in advance from a WiPay agent in Trinidad & Tobago. He/she then enters the number and submits. The system will check the voucher balance against the order value and apply, which completes the order process and generates the confirmation.
On the payment options listed on the checkout page you’ll see WiPay Voucher Call which is a third option. This lets the customer complete the order without paying. The customer then goes to any WiPay agent in Trinidad & Tobago and purchases a ‘Voucher’ for the order amount or even more if desired.

The customer then phones or emails the merchant and provides the voucher number which the merchant manually enters on his site’s order management area to mark the order paid so he can start processing.

Forward Multimedia offers WiPay ONLY on these platforms

WordPress/Woo Commerce
Magento Open Source

One of the great selling points of WiPay for WordPress is its free plug-in the user can download and upload/activate on their online store powered with Woo Commerce. Configuration to connect your account requires only two fields, nothing technical. Bottom line is that you don’t need a developer to integrate like FAC, you can do it on your own as the plug-in does it all for you.

There is also a ‘Sandbox’ mode where you can run tests transactions before you go live and dummy credit card numbers are provided.
On the payment options listed on the checkout page you’ll see WiPay Voucher. The customer needs to have their voucher in hand, i.e. the voucher would have been purchased in advance from a WiPay agent in Trinidad & Tobago. He/she then enters the number and submits. The system will check the voucher balance against the order value and apply, which completes the order process and generates the confirmation.

FUN FACT #2: WiPay’s CEO Aldwyn Wayne reached out to Forward Multimedia in July 2016, but it wasn’t till Jan 2017 I was able to test and then write a review only by March 2017.

WiPay default features

In addition to the three payment types mentioned above, there other features of WiPay to be aware of. WiPay can’t be compared head to head with FAC as they’re apples to green fig.