Vodafone Fiji M-PAiSA — Mobile Money for Financial & Digital Inclusion

Vodafone Fiji launched the M-PAiSA mobile wallet in 2010, with approval from the Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF), targeting the large share of Fijians — especially in rural and outer-island communities — without access to a traditional bank branch. In 2011 M-PAiSA won the GSMA Global Mobile Money for the Unbanked Award.

According to the RBF's 2022 annual report, 632,123 people (more than two-thirds of Fiji's population) used M-PAiSA or the rival MyCash wallet that year. Growth accelerated further in 2023: the value of peer-to-peer transfers rose 341.7% to FJ$782.4 million, on 12 million P2P transactions (up 316.5%), driven by government bulk disbursements, remittances and everyday payments. On 14 October 2024, the RBF integrated M-PAiSA and MyCash into FIJICLEAR, Fiji's national payment-system backbone, enabling instant transfers between mobile wallets and bank accounts across all providers — a step the regulator described as opening banking access to people who lack a traditional account.

A 2024 peer-reviewed study of Fiji's banking sector (2012–2024) found a statistically significant positive association between digital-banking adoption and financial inclusion, while cautioning that the relationship is correlational rather than proven causal — a reminder that mobile-money uptake alone does not guarantee full financial inclusion for outer-island and low-income communities.