The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Mr Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum yesterday launched Vodafone’s International Money Transfer service through M-PAiSA. This new and innovative service is a first for Fiji and is a natural progression in the value chain for M-PAiSA. M-PAiSA was launched in 2010 by Prime Minster Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama with person to person money transfer service and mobile recharge options via mobile phones. It now offers a suite of payment options such as water and electricity bill payment and other customer to business and business to customer payment. Government through the judicial department has also adopted the M-PAiSA channel to make child maintenance payments and also to receive traffic and criminal fines.
International Money Transfer service is the newest addition to the growing suite of local and international payment services now available through M-PAiSA.
“M-PAiSA and mobile phones based financial services are revolutionary concepts which may well be recognized as one of the great innovations of its time. The launch of M-PAiSA just over a year ago was most timely with the market yearning for practical ideas to facilitate access to financial services to a large section of the un-banked population, Mr Khaiyum said.
Mobile phone based financial services offers the convenience that is not available in any other consumer channel. In developing countries like Fiji with our geographic dispersion, the mobile handset provides the unbanked segment of the population the potential to access most types of financial services; transactional and informational at the touch of a button and at a fraction of cost.
The mobile phone technology has redefined space and time; information and funds can move from around the globe at almost the speed of light. With this first phase of IMT launch between M-PAiSA and Lotus Foreign Exchange, senders from Australia and New Zealand will be now be able to send money directly onto your mobile phones in a fraction of time.
Mr Khaiyum assured the public that the Reserve Bank of Fiji has only approved the IMT services through M-PAiSA after a comprehensive test which included the system’s reliability and governance, audit trail, consumer protection, settlement risk, KYC requirements, service level agreements, dispute resolution procedures, remitting model, and business continuity plans among other evaluation criteria.
I am glad to report that the above criteria have been fully met. Therefore, the public can be confident that the product being launched today is not only technologically sound and secure, but has a legal framework under the RBF Act. This being a cross border remittances service involving the movement of foreign currency, the approval has been issued under the RBF Act which empowers the Central Bank to grant specific permission to any person to transact foreign exchange business subject to conditions the Central Bank may impose.
By 2012, the global remittance market would be worth US$ 502 billion. Of these, remittances sent home by migrants from developing countries will constitute 80% of the total remittances. The Fijian Diaspora remitted FJD $ 294 million back to Fiji last year through the formal channels such us commercial banks and authorized international money transfer entities.
The Launch of IMT through M-PAiSA will also benefit assist members of our community who rely on remittances as their major source of livelihood. This will certainly benefit members of our community, serving in peace keeping mission who send money home regularly and also the many sports players who also send money home on a regular basis.
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