Central bankers from six Pacific Island countries, including Tonga, are in Sydney this week looking at ways to strengthen mobile banking in the region.

Senior executives from the central banks of Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa are discussing the growth of mobile banking in the first-ever Pacific Branchless Banking Seminar. The two-day event that started on November 19 is being jointly organised by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).

Tonga is represented Ms Ungatea Latu from the Reserve Bank of Tonga (Head of Financial Markets and Financial Institutions).

The seminar also includesrepresentatives from financial service providers, mobile network operators and technology providers from all over the region.

According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), banking services in the Pacific are “increasingly available in the palm of the hand, or from a banking agent in the village or close to home”, and the objective of the seminar is to identify policies, innovations, and practices that “strengthen an environment for branchless banking in the region.”

The Regional Director of the ADB’s Pacific & Coordination Office, Andrea Iffland stated that, “With the vast majority of Pacific people still ‘unbanked’, the uptake of mobile and branchless banking is proving the most effective means of extending access to formal financial services to all,”.