From paper-based to electronic payments in the Pacific Islands: How and by how much would Tonga benefit in the transition process?

Holti Banka, Carlo Corazza and Balakrishnan Mahadevan
Additional contact information
Holti Banka: Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank, USA

Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems, 2016, vol. 10, issue 1, 84-95

Abstract: Efficiency gains due to migration to lower-cost retail payment instruments could entail significant benefits to economic development and financial inclusion. This paper uses Tonga as a case study in order to examine savings that could be achieved in three main areas of payment systems reforms in the process of transitioning from paper-based to electronic payment instruments: remittances, government payments, and overall payments infrastructure and interoperability. Assuming an upfront cost and constant annual savings due to reforms, the paper projects an initial fixed cost of modernising the payments infrastructure of 0.5 per cent of the current GDP, and net savings of up to 3.2 per cent of the current GDP in ten years for Tonga.

Keywords: Tonga; cost of cash; remittances; savings; electronic payments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 G2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/3694/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/3694/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jpss00:y:2016:v:10:i:1:p:84-95

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().