Kevin Nyango
TechInPacific – MiBank, the largest micro bank in the South Pacific sets its future plans in order to reach wider areas of Papua New Guinea. The focus will be on offering digital financial solutions and preventing ‘old-fashioned fixed branches’ as its objective to grow bigger and acknowledged in the country.
The CEO of MiBank, Tony Westaway said the Bank is currently maintaining 12 branches and 85 banking agents across the country to implement its mobile phone offerings.
Westaway said, “We are looking forward to 2019 because we are going to further our digital financial services platforms. We believe that extending outreach to Papua New Guinea cannot be done with the old fashioned fixed branch network, but can be done using mobile phones.”
Westaway also said that the Bank plans to attract more customers in PNG by reaching out into areas where there are no MiBank branches there. The key focus will be on offering financial inclusion to the new areas.
“MiBank is one of the biggest players in financial inclusion in Papua New Guinea,” Westaway said.
Speaking about MiBank’s vision to provide financial inclusion, Westaway said they would focus more on the unbanked population in PNG and pull them into ‘the formal financial service sector’.
He believes that by introducing the financial inclusion to the unbanked population in PNG, MiBank will contribute to national economic growth. The financial inclusion on the SME sector has gone well while the Bank is now planning to expand BSP Automatic Teller Machines and EFTPOS machines for cardholders to a national switch where there has still no MiBank card transactions been found.
“A national switch will be available in the first half of next year and at that time we will be able to use ATMs of Westpac, Kina Bank, ANZ, and so forth,” said Westaway.
