Users are increasingly moving away from traditional money remittance services in favor of mobile phone money remitters when sending funds to Fiji.
This significant trend was highlighted in data from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in its 2023 annual report, which was presented in Parliament on September 2, 2024, by Attorney-General Graham Leung. The FIU, as Fiji’s anti-money laundering agency, tracks and records all financial transactions across 172 financial institutions in various sectors, including commercial banks, mobile phone companies, accounting firms, legal practitioners, money lenders, real estate agents, and insurance and superannuation companies.
In 2023, the FIU reported having over 30 million transactions logged in its database. Of these, the money sent to and from Fiji falls under Electronic Fund Transfer Reports (EFTRs).
The volume of total EFTRs surged from roughly 1.5 million in 2019 to 3.5 million in 2023. However, there was a pronounced shift in the method of fund transfer: transactions through traditional money remittance providers plummeted from 71 percent in 2019 to 26 percent in 2023. Conversely, remittances using mobile phones skyrocketed from just 4 percent of total EFTRs in 2019 to over 60 percent by 2023.
The FIU noted that the rise in mobile phone money remittances is largely due to consumer demand for mobile wallets, which offer a more convenient and cost-effective option for sending money to Fiji compared to traditional remittance channels.
In the breakdown of total EFTRs, inward remittances comprised 92 percent, with 47 percent coming from Australia, 19 percent from the United States, 18 percent from New Zealand, 8 percent from the United Kingdom, and 2 percent from Canada. Outward remittances were primarily directed towards Australia (22 percent), New Zealand (17 percent), the United States (7 percent), India (7 percent), and China (4 percent), according to the FIU.