In 2017, two teenagers from Saint Lucia walked into the International FIRST Global Robotics competition with nothing more than curiosity, talent, and a natural ability to collaborate. That was the first moment people noticed the quiet synergy between Keeghan Patrick and Shergaun Roserie. They would not know it then, but that early partnership would become the foundation for one of the Caribbean's most ambitious fintech stories.
By 2020, they launched Orbtronics, a digital transformation agency built to modernize how governments and enterprises operated across the Caribbean. They worked on workflow automation, public sector digitization, and capacity building. Their STEM programs reached more than a thousand young people, and their leadership earned major regional and global recognition. Both founders were named to the Caribbean's 35 Under 35 list. Keeghan went on to be selected as part of the highly selective Emergent Ventures Fellowship, and Roserie received honors such as becoming the Caribbean Youth of the Year and being selected as one of the CommonWealth Youth Awards Finalist in 2023.
Their credentials were impressive, but something far more concerning continued to surface inside every government system they supported. Suppliers were delivering the work but waiting months to get paid. Small businesses were winning contracts without the working capital to sustain themselves. Traditional banks moved slowly. Factoring options were limited or inaccessible. Many SMEs were forced to delay growth or take on unnecessary risk simply to survive the long payment cycles.
A European Commission study found that government-to-business delays imposed costs of up to 0.19% of GDP in global economies. In Brazil, over 50% of municipalities carried arrears to suppliers. In India, a 2023 MSME finance report estimated that about 7.8% of GDP was locked up in delayed payments, with 80% owed to micro and small enterprises.
At some point, a realization landed. The World did not just need better digital procurement tools. It needed a new financial infrastructure. Patrick puts it simply. "We realized the real problem was not procurement. It was cash flow."
That insight became the starting point for Rifbid.
Turning Government Receivables into Financial Opportunity
Rifbid treats an approved government invoice for what it truly is: an asset. The platform allows contractors to upload verified invoices. Those invoices are converted into digital financial instruments that investors can participate in. Suppliers receive immediate liquidity. Investors earn returns once the government pays.
The model is clean and practical. Suppliers receive ninety percent of their invoice value up front. Rifbid keeps a small fee for the service. Investors earn a yield up to 10% when the government settles the payment. The founders are not trying to reinvent how governments pay suppliers. They are solving the part of the process that has caused strain for decades: the wait.
Government payments tend to be slow but reliable. The issue is timing, not risk. Rifbid uses tokenization as the engine that converts a slow-moving asset into something faster, more transparent, and easier to access.
A Global Problem Seen Through a Caribbean Lens
As the founders expanded their research into markets beyond the Caribbean, they found the same challenges repeating themselves. Around the globe, the same pattern showed. Small businesses were delivering high-quality work. Governments paid predictably but on slow timelines. Banks were unable or unwilling to bridge the gap. Entrepreneurs everywhere were dealing with the same liquidity pressure.
It became clear that Rifbid was not just a Caribbean solution but a globally relevant structure. Roserie explains it openly. "Different countries had different cultures, but the pain point was the same. Once we saw that, we knew the model could travel."
Rifbid plans to launch its first financing pools in the United States. It is a market with a large procurement volume and clear transparency standards. From there, the company intends to expand across the Americas, then into the global markets with stronger infrastructure and a proven model behind it. The long-term vision includes a secondary market where tokens tied to government receivables can be traded, introducing liquidity into an asset class that historically had none.
The Clear Arc of Two Builders
Their journey becomes much clearer when viewed as a continuous progression. The robotics work in 2017 built their instinct for solving problems with limited resources. The digital transformation work in 2020 exposed them to real government inefficiencies and the human cost behind them. Rifbid is not a sudden pivot. It is the natural outcome of years spent watching small suppliers struggle inside systems that were never designed for them. The awards they have earned along the way are not decorations. They are markers of resilience and proof that both founders have been consistently building, learning, and pushing forward long before this idea ever became a company. That is the difference. Rifbid is not something they stumbled into. It is the culmination of everything they have lived through and everything they have worked to understand.
A Strategic Fundraise with Real Momentum Behind It
Rifbid is currently raising 1.5 million dollars to launch what could be the world's first tokenized financing system for government receivables. The founders are already in conversations with contractors managing portfolios valued in the hundreds of millions. If deployed at scale, Rifbid believes it can build a decentralized marketplace around government-backed receivables with the potential to reach a multi-billion dollar valuation in the coming years.
What makes this moment significant is not hype or speculation. It is the fact that the liquidity challenge Rifbid is addressing is real, global, and widely documented. It is also a problem that governments, suppliers, and investors all feel in different ways.
This journey began with two teenagers navigating a robotics competition in 2017. It matured into a digital transformation mission in 2020. Today, it is evolving into a financial infrastructure platform that could reshape how public sector supply chains operate across the world.
If Rifbid succeeds, the model taking shape on a small Caribbean island may one day influence how entire economies handle liquidity, growth, and financial inclusion. It may help governments around the world accelerate economic development in their communities.
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