E-money payments valued at $110.2m

TOTAL payments made through e-Money by December 2020 was valued at $110.2 million, states the 2020 Financial Inclusion Report released by the Reserve Bank of Fiji.

And total e-Money in circulation as of December 31 2020 stood at $37.3 million as more and more people used the mobile money platforms to remit money, make deposits, make bill payments and receive monies from Fiji National Provident Fund and NGOs as part of COVID-19 assistance.

“The outturn is attributed to substantial growth in person-to-person (P2P) transactions boosted in part by an initiative from Vodafone in partnership with PFIP (Pacific Financial Inclusion Program) which provided a waiver of fees for P2P services from May to July.

“Total remittances received via the mobile money platform during the year recorded an unprecedented surge (by more than threefold to around $82.1 million when compared with the same period in 2019) which led to increased mobile wallet balances.”

The report states 27.2 per cent of bulk payments processed were for the Tertiary Education Loans Scheme (TELS), South Pacific Business Development, Fiji Care, Dominion Finance and the Fiji Teachers Union Cooperative Thrift and Credit.