APFII SYSTEMS

APFII is based in the South Pacific, but working hard to achieve a membership that will include real-time payment and trade finance facilities to over 110 countries, covering two million monthly customers.  This includes:

  • Building National Payment Platforms for G-77 Economies

    In 2020, The Tongan Central Bank (NRBT) launched the Pacific's first purpose built real time National Payment Service. Tonga is unique among world Central Banks, in that all banks joined the system (usually, a proportion of larger banks become direct clearing members in any given country) - and that Tonga is one of the most banked nations in the world - with one bank per 11,000 adults, (approximately 1:26,000 per capita). Read more here.

  • Providing life, medical, and health insurance to The Pacific:

APFII is launching a project to provide life insurance to 100 percent of Tongan households by the second half of 2018. This will be expanded to the other Pacific markets, and will also include health insurance.

Insurance Coverage continues to expand, and in 2020, environmental coverage to consumers in Fiji received the first APFII mass-payout, with 100% of qualified APFI Users receiving emergency cyclone/hurricane relief in response to Cyclone Yasi, equivalent to approximately 2% of GDP per capita per customer.

From 2015-2021- APFII members offered policies of more than $100m in insurance coverage, including cross border coverage for Working Visa schemes in Australia and New Zealand, including the highest payout benefits in the market by a large margin.

  • Resolving the burden of 'de-risking' in the Pacific, to return electronic payment volumes to 80 percent of all transactions:

This has fallen to 40 percent due to lack of infrastructure in the markets from which money is sent from - including Australia, NZ, and the US. This work includes includes:

Investing $300 million in 2018 to build out financial platforms formed in partnership with IBM, local Pension Funds, and local/strategic Central Banks (*several NGOs and non-member organisations have expressed interest to co-participate).

$100 million of this investment will also be committed to resolving de-risking outside the Pacific.  Three National Payment System expansions are already underway in five observer markets including Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States.  These markets will enable access to send county clearing systems, with the aim of deepening operational and technological partnerships.

In 2021 - APFII Members joined the Australian Payment System - and can issue local bank accounts. Similar services are expected in New Zealand at some later stage.

  • Continued Growth of the Regional Real Time Payment Services, within the Pacific (13 markets now covered).

    The extension of the APFII Payment Systems will formally grow significantly in 2021 as the 2020 joining of the M-Paisa system by Vodafone to the APFII network - adding Vanuatu, Kiribati, the Solomons, PNG, the Cook Islands, to an already flourishing Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu markets, and the Tuvalu National Card Scheme (in operation since 2019).

  • Extending clearing systems to process regional transactions via Blockchain:

KlickEx, a founding member of APFII, trialed IBM's Blockchain system in 2017 and 2018 to world acclaim. The pioneering Partnership with IBM created the world's only multi-country blockchain backed payment infrastructure to be run by prudentially supervised Institutions, and placed almost 100% of GDP through its corridors over a few short months.

In 2019 - IBM handed the platform back to KlickEx and WorldWire reverted to non-distributed systems, due to cost savings and efficiency. Live payments can be viewed here: More can be seen in this short video at the end of the APFII.org/Bank page.

  • In 2021 - APFII and members are sponsoring a proposed NYSE listing & IPO.

    Currently (2020) before the SEC filing process - APFII and its membership are seeking to raise a little over 11 billion New Zealand Dollars in 2021 to again increase the coverage of its membership platforms.

    Following the success of APFII’s 2016 Expressions of Interest program achieving NZD 700m for a regional anti-de-risking project, and a follow-on conditional private placement for USD 250m in 2018, and the successful consumation of a NZD 100m local acquisition fund in 2019, APFII and its members are sponsoring the formation of a formal acquisition fund via the NYSE, to bring more than NZD 11b in new assets into the ownership of APFII group associates.

    More information can be found here.