Official urges Govt to use digital payment system

IT would be good to see government institutions digitalising their payments systems to enable more transparency, an official says.
Bank South Pacific director Stuart Davis said during a digital commerce forum via a webinar in Port Moresby yesterday that the government should learn from businesses.
“It would be good to see digitalisation of government payments in Papua New Guinea and to see the impact government have on political corruption and to see that money gets placed in the right place,” he said.
“Digitalisation is changing the way business is being done.”
Davis said PNG needed to maximise its part in e-commerce.
“Telecommunication needs to be improved, data cost needs to be reduced and the next big improvement in logistics, transport and storage challenges prevail and these needs to improved,” Davis said.
“And then final thing is that the people skills needs to be enhanced, this is for tertiary institutions to come out and talk more on digital knowledge.”
He said businesses were now selling online.
“In terms of sales, one of the things that we are seeing now is dynamic pricing, which is being used now to drive optimum sales.
“In marketing strategies, we are seeing Instagram being used, emails, Facebook, Messenger and the more traditional SMS,” Davis said.
“Online is not just about driving sales, but also about competition.”
Belinda Manning, BSP’s head of digital – implementation and performance said online business-to-business payments was growing as e-commerce presented a significant impact on costs associated with inventories, sales executions, procurement, intangibles like banking, and distribution cost.
“As these reductions becomes become pervasive, e-commerce has the potential to be the application that ushers in large productivity gains,” she said.