Mobile money and new subsea cables have arrived in Fiji ahead of the law meant to govern the personal data running through them
Person-to-person digital transfers in Fiji reached FJ$2.4 billion at June 2025, up from FJ$1.8 billion a year earlier, according to the Reserve Bank of Fiji’s 2025 annual report as reported by The Fiji Times. Fiji has no specific law protecting personal data, a gap acknowledged by the Speaker of Parliament and by the officials developing the framework.
The central bank counted 694,938 active e-money users at June 2025, up 6%, even as registered users fell 7.4% to 875,644. DataReportal put Fiji’s internet users at 741,000 at the end of 2025.
The Reserve Bank’s 2022 annual report recorded FJ$782.4 million in person-to-person mobile money transfers and 632,123 M-PAiSA and MyCash users, The Fiji Times reported at the time. On the central bank’s own figures, transfer value has roughly tripled since.
FJ$6 billion through M-PAiSA
Payment service providers processed FJ$990.5 million in transactions in the year to June 2025, up 84.9%, and 55.1% of that was completed by QR code, the Reserve Bank reported. Remittances paid straight into digital and mobile wallets rose 25.6% to FJ$692.5 million, mainly from Australia, the United States, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
M-PAiSA launched in June 2010. Vodafone Fiji’s wallet handled more than FJ$6 billion in transactions in the financial year to June 2025, according to parent company Amalgamated Telecom Holdings’ annual report, as reported by The Fiji Times. M-PAiSA now operates through a separate licensed subsidiary, Digital Financial Services, a structure the National Payment System Act 2021 required.
The Reserve Bank has linked mobile wallets to a fall in Fiji’s unbanked rate from 45% in 2010 to about 6%, Fiji One News reported when M-PAiSA joined the national payment system. Digicel Fiji’s MyCash is also connected, allowing instant transfers between wallets and banks.
Five licensed payment service providers offer digital wallets in Fiji, The Fiji Times reported: M-PAiSA operator Digital Financial Services, Digicel’s MyCash, Solé, Abacus Fintech and Dynamic Payment. The Reserve Bank told a World Bank and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat workshop that remittances through mobile networks now account for almost half of the FJ$1.3 billion in annual remittance inflows. Transactions on the government-regulated e-Transport bus card system fell 25.9% to FJ$261.3 million in the year to June 2025.
A policy, not yet a law
Speaker of Parliament Filimone Jitoko told a conference of prosecutors that Fiji still lacks a unified framework defining how public bodies and private companies collect, store, process and protect personal data, Fijivillage reported. Elements exist in the Information Act 2018 and the Cybercrime Act 2021, he said, and called a full data protection and privacy law one of the most pressing legislative priorities.
A report by the Singapore-based AI Asia Pacific Institute found Fiji has no specific personal data protection legislation, The Fiji Times reported. Privacy rests on Section 24 of the 2013 Constitution and on confidentiality clauses in sector laws such as the Banking Act 1995.
Cabinet has endorsed a National Privacy and Personal Data Protection Policy, which Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said lays the foundation for legislation, according to Fijivillage. Rabuka said Fiji would also move to accede to the Council of Europe’s Convention 108+ on personal data.
The Council of Europe’s GLACY-e project ran awareness sessions in Suva in March with the Ministry of Policing and Communications, describing the work as progress towards Fiji’s first data protection legislation. In September, Director of Communications Tupou’tuah Baravilala told a parliamentary committee reviewing the Vuvale Union and Ocean of Peace treaties that the framework was still being written. “We’re currently in the process of developing that framework,” he said, according to FBC News. Baravilala said the work could receive Australian funding and that data protection provisions had been built into the government’s digital systems by design. Committee member Virendra Lal asked whether the Vuvale treaty would make Fiji’s networks dependent on Australian technology; Permanent Secretary for Policing Berenado Daveta said Fiji would protect its sovereignty.
Minister for Policing and Communications Ioane Naivalurua told Parliament in August that data protection legislation had to pass before amendments to the cybercrime law could proceed, The Fiji Times reported.
Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu said 1,672 scam cases were reported at 21 police stations between 2017 and mid-2026, with losses above FJ$1.3 million, FBC News reported. Of those, 338 reached prosecution and 1,334 remain under investigation. Eleven ended in convictions.
Police have set up a dedicated Scams Section, and plans are under way for a national scam response centre under the National Anti-Scams Taskforce, the Fiji Sun reported. Consumer Council of Fiji chief executive Seema Shandil said a review of consumer protection law last year had moved the focus to modernising legislation.
In 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica announced amendments to the Online Safety Act 2018 and the Cyber Security Act 2021 to give authorities more power to collect evidence, prosecute and cooperate internationally, the Fiji Sun reported. A national scam reporting and analytics platform was due to launch in early 2026, according to the same report. Fiji’s Financial Intelligence Unit said in an October 2025 risk guide that mobile wallet providers report scam activity directly to the National Scam Taskforce and police rather than to the unit.
Four cable landings and 5G
Google’s Bulikula and Tabua subsea cables landed at FINTEL’s station in Vatuwaqa, Suva, in January 2025, with two further connections at Natadola, the Fiji government announced. The cables link Fiji directly to the United States, Australia, Japan and South America under Google’s Pacific Connect initiative, with FINTEL, the Fiji National Provident Fund and Amalgamated Telecom Holdings as local partners, The Fiji Times reported.
Telecom Fiji later signed with Google to build and maintain a terrestrial fibre link between Vatuwaqa and Google’s facility at Natadola, FBC News reported. The route runs along the Queens Highway, according to Fiji One News. Google Cloud vice president Brian Quigley said the cables had established Fiji as a connectivity hub for the Pacific.
Naivalurua told Parliament that Fiji had rolled out 5G, set up a national Computer Emergency Response Team and a 24-hour government network and security operations centre, The Fiji Times reported. Fiji also became the first Pacific nation, and the 50th globally, to sign the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on cybercrime, he said.
DataReportal put internet penetration at 79.3% at the end of 2025. A UNESCO assessment conducted between September 2023 and September 2024 put it at 97%, The Fiji Times reported, and Internet Society Pulse data puts it at about 75%. The same Internet Society data rates consumer choice of internet providers as very poor, with Vodafone Fiji holding 67% of the market.
Rabuka said the National Universal Service programme now runs 114 sites across Kadavu, Tailevu, Lau, Lomaiviti, Namosi and Navosa, connecting more than 2,557 households and over 11,000 people, Mai TV reported in September. Those communities used about 57 terabytes of data in July on a network available 96% of the time, he said. A student in Lomaiviti can now reach online learning without moving to a town, he said.
Tenders have closed for Phase Two, covering another 104 unserved sites, and 311 more communities are being gazetted and assessed, Rabuka said. “For Fiji, bringing infrastructure onto community land is far more than a technical task,” he said, pointing to customary protocols and land considerations. The government is also reviewing the Telecommunications Act to cover consumer protection, network security and investment in new technologies, he said. The ministry and the Telecommunications Authority of Fiji will focus on service quality, according to the same report. Rabuka described Fiji as the Pacific’s leading digitally connected nation but said rural and outer-island communities still face significant geographic barriers.
Naivalurua told Parliament in August that a whole-of-government exercise had identified 788 services provided by ministries and agencies, Fiji One News reported. A digital identity built on the digitalFIJI e-Profile is meant to give Fijians secure access to government, health, financial and social services, according to the same report.
At the ITU’s development conference in Azerbaijan last November, Naivalurua argued that for small island states, digital access is tied to survival, security and sovereignty, according to a Fiji government release. He pointed to high connectivity and infrastructure costs and heavy exposure to disasters.
UNCTAD’s Digital Economy Report: Pacific Edition 2024 found that gaps in digital skills, financing and literacy limit digital entrepreneurship across Pacific island states.
The government has not published a date for the data protection bill. Naivalurua told Parliament the cybercrime amendments cannot proceed until it passes.
