G2P: Fiji’s Electronic Welfare Transfer System

Digitizing social welfare payments can be a win-win for all stakeholders involved when done right; the recipients of welfare receive their payments in a more convenient and cost-effective way, the government can streamline services to make them more efficient and reduce illegitimate payment, and the service provider gains more customers. It was this thinking that motivated the Department of Social Welfare in Fiji to convert their paper-based voucher payments to a digital method of paying out support to families in need of income support.

In 2018 the project partners decided to assess the impact of digital payments over the last seven years. The result was an extensive study culminating in this report. This report is a rare study into how this kind of project had impacted stakeholders over the years; research on the impact of digitization efforts is costly and direct linkages to poverty reductions are hard to state, making this assessment amongst stakeholders of digital social welfare payments unique.