WiPay gives COVID-19 grants to healthcare workers in St.Elizabeth

On Monday, 4 October, WiPay Jamaica launched the first part of its WiCare Digital Grant Initiative in partnership with Member of Parliament Floyd Green. The grant will benefit one hundred frontline healthcare workers from the Black River Hospital. Each recipient will receive $7,500 from WiPay’s Regional Digital Payments Transformation Fund which is valued US$1 million.

The launch took place at INTOWN Supermarket in Black River. Green, Kibwe McGann, WiPay’s country manager, and Sean Brissette, Parish Manager for St Elizabeth Health Services were in attendance. “I thought a great way to show not only regard for our healthcare workers but also financial technology in actuality, was to work with WiPay to reward frontline health workers,” said Green.

Recipients of the grant will each receive a QR code, via text message, WhatsApp or email. The recipient then goes to any of the participating redemption centres in Black River: INTOWN Supercentre, Lashings, Jakes, Frenchmen, Petcom, and Cawleys Pharmacy.  Beneficiaries can shop and pay for services using the QR Code.

Green said that this technology made it easier to provide COVID-19 relief to healthcare workers because it eliminated the need for face-to-face interaction to distribute and utilize the grants. He added that it was also easier because recipients did not need to be concerned with taking public transportation on the deteriorating roads in St Elizabeth in order to collect their grants.

“It makes it a lot easier, and it definitely helps in terms of transparency and accountability. Easier because the old methodologies are largely cheque-based. When our residents get checks, it then means they have to encounter the banks and it’s hard enough during regular times, but it is harder during a pandemic. What we’ve seen in southwestern St Elizabeth is that a number of our banks have scaled-down,” said Green. He noted that in the constituency, a number of banks only have one branch that processes cash, which would increase the challenges of these healthcare workers if a cashless alternative was not provided.

“Cash has been labelled as a super spreader for the COVID-19 virus. So as the Caribbean’s leader in financial technology, we challenged ourselves to develop a solution that removed cash from the system, and one that was accessible to the underbanked and unbanked. Not everyone has a bank account, so WiPay developed the solution to be accessible from their mobile devices,” said McGann.

Each QR Code is a unique identifier that can only be scanned by a WiPay Smart Terminal which has been installed at the participating locations. The smart terminal scans the code, verifies the recipient’s name and balance on the QR code, which is then registered as a cash payment towards a bill.

Green added that it was difficult to choose the 100 recipients, but the list had been created in collaboration with the St Elizabeth health team.

Brissette noted, “The staff is really grateful. When you are going on and on, involved in the various activities in the COVID fight and somebody recognizes you in this manner, if it is even two cents, people will be grateful. It says we are not alone”. He emphasized that they were grateful that their hard work was recognized.

The Digital Payments Transformation Fund has also assisted Food For The Poor and The Bounty Foundation, which will see an additional US$15,000 being taken from the fund and distributed to those identified as most in need using the same QR Code digital payment technology developed by WiPay. Over the next two weeks, additional grant recipients will be identified by the foundations and the grants dispersed by text message and WhatsApp.

This next stage will be launched in partnership with The Progressive Group, which will see the expansion of the Initiative islandwide through the onboarding of 28 additional supermarkets.

Over the last two years. US$860,000 has been accessed from WiPay’s Digital Transformation Fund which is valued US$1Million. The fund was activated shortly after the Pandemic began to take its toll on Caribbean. This is part of WiPay’s Corporate Responsibility Initiative – WiCare. Other Jamaican partners who have contributed to the Fund are YELLO Media Group and JMMB.