Digital Bank ID Card Pilot — Village-Chief-Vouched Biometric Identity for Unbanked Farmers in Papua New Guinea

The Bank of Papua New Guinea (BPNG), working with technology provider Digizen and executing banks MiBank and Mama Bank, piloted a Digital Bank ID Card between December 2022 and March 2023 in the villages around Wewak and Maprik, East Sepik Province — an area with poor connectivity and limited electricity supply.
Field agents used a tablet fitted with a camera and fingerprint reader to capture each resident's photo, fingerprints and identity details, issuing a near-field-communication (NFC) smart card on the spot. Where a person lacked official documentation, a recognised local vouching authority — such as a village chief already holding a Digital Bank ID Card and PIN — could digitally co-sign to confirm their identity, cutting verification from months to minutes; a whole village could be enrolled in a day.
The pilot enrolled 2,548 subsistence farmers and small traders, 47% of them women, most of whom had never held a bank account and were previously confined to a cash economy that left savings vulnerable to theft and shocks. Enrolled residents were able to open bank accounts immediately after registration.
Beyond the enrolment numbers, the pilot's documented institutional outputs were an electronic Know-Your-Customer (e-KYC) framework and BPNG's first regulatory sandbox in the Pacific region, intended to let the model be adopted more broadly across PNG's financial sector. The Asian Development Bank, which backed the pilot, has not published longer-term data confirming enrollees' continued account activity beyond the trial period.

Read the full analysis: https://www.businessadvantagepng.com/take-it-to-the-bank-new-digizen-id-card-to-drive-financial-inclusion-in-papua-new-guinea/