Partnership to make banking services convenient for small businesses

A WOMEN’s group has partnered with Post PNG Ltd to use its 45 offices throughout the country as post banks where micro to small and medium enterprise (MSME) entrepreneurs will be able to conduct their banking in conjunction with the e-wallet business model.
PNG Women In Business Foundation (PNGWIBF) chief executive Dayelyne Langarap said this was under a partnership with the Government, Bank of PNG’s sandbox programme, Post PNG and a Singapore-based fintech company.
Langarap said PNGWIBF wanted to make sure banking services reached 85 per cent of the unbanked population in rural Papua New Guinea.
“If the nearest post office bank is still inaccessible, the WIBF will partner with village shop owners to deliver basic banking services right through to the ward level,” she said.
“Similarly, if there is poor network coverage in the particular rural area, USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) services can be enabled on the e-wallet for the entrepreneur to at least check their account balance or view statements and transactions.”
Langarap said with the current state of emergency, the e-wallet would enable MSME entrepreneurs to tap into the digital economy.
“International market opportunities in the agriculture, fishery and MSME sectors will be opened up.” Langarap said the e-wallet would capture real time statistics for K12 billion, according to BPNG estimates of PNG informal sector gross domestic product (GDP) output which were never recorded since independence.
“I acknowledge the commitment of the Marape-Steven Government to support the women’s initiative to drive the agenda of banking the unbanked,” she said.