REPS Monthly Statistics Updates

NATIONAL SWITCH STATISTICS

The Payment Systems Department runs two mission critical systems for the continued operation of business and consumers in PNG, with the support of other departments of the bank. The two systems are Kina Automated Transfer System (KATS) and the National Switch-Retail Electronic Payment System (REPS), which is operated by a dedicated group of employees who ensures their smooth operations. The inability of the payment systems, either KATS & REPS to process payments effectively and efficiently could disrupt nationwide economic activity.

In July 2024, another milestone was achieved when Tisa Bank Ltd and Credit Bank PNG were connected to the National Switch on 8th July & 15th July, respectively. This bring the total of eight (8) financial institutions connected to National Switch.

What does REPS Process?

REPS processes card-based transactions using ATMs and EFTPOS terminals. The eight members of REPS include commercial banks, Micro Banks, Savings and Loan organizations. They are BSP, Westpac, Kina Bank, Credit Bank PNG, Tisa Bank, NCSL, MiBank, and NBC. 

Any ATM or EFTPOS terminal offered by a REPS Member is open to the local debit cards offered by any other Member. This means a card issued by any of these Members can be used at other REPS Member devices making in-store payments easy and access to cash available at virtually all ATMs and EFTPOS counters in PNG.

With Kina Bank decommissioning the use of its local debit cards on the 31st October 2024 and issuing Visa Debit Cards, REPS will not be capturing the Kina Bank Visa Debit Cards transactions.

REPS also processes Instant Payment Transactions (IPT). IPT was launched in March 2021. These are a real time digital payment currently offered by the non-bank REPS members – NCSL, MiBank and NBC. IPT volumes remain low as expected until the commercial banks offer them. Refer to Table 1. Commercial banks and Mobile Network Operators (MNO’s) will be added after the review of National Payments Strategy 2024-2026 is completed and implemented in 2025.

REPS is a 24/7 system. It operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – every day of the year. If people need to make a card-based payment on the weekend or after business hours REPS processes the transaction. An important transaction offered by REPS (and local debit cards) is the EFTPOS Purchase + Cashback. This allows people to make a card payment at a shop and get cash at the same time.

When did REPS Go-Live?

The Retail Electronic Payments System (REPS), with the National Switch at its core, commenced operation in 21 July 2019, with three inaugural members, namely BSP, Kina Bank and NCSL and three more institutions joined on 1st of September. They were Westpac Bank, NBC and MiBank. Another important development during the period was the acquisition of ANZ Bank Retail Customers by Kina Bank on the 23rd September, which resulted to significant increase in volumes processed by the National Switch. 

Two new REPS members joined in July 2024. They are TISA Bank on the 8th of July and Credit Bank on the 15th of July 2024. This brings the total of eight (8) financial institutions connected to National Switch. 

The Disputes portal for the REPS card switching system was implemented on the 26th November 2024. Pilot testing was done with BSP and Kina Bank with the portal commissioned for use by the pilot members on the 12th December 2024. TISA Bank, Credit Bank, MiBank on-boarded the portal in February 2025. Westpac, NBC on-boarded the dispute portal in March with Westpac onboarding in early April 2025. Work is in progress for NBC to onboard the disputes portal.

After the launch in July 2019, REPS continued to deliver improved access with minimal disruptions and processed over 91.8 million transactions (excluding balance enquiries), valued at K16.1 billion at the end of March 2025. 

Ongoing Developments 

In May 2024, the draft National Payments Strategy (NPS) 2024-2026 was released to the National Payments Council for review and feedback. Following the review, the strategy was updated and was presented to the Board of BPNG in September 2024. The Board advised to provide more detail on collaborating efforts with all stakeholders in BPNG, pricing models and clear plans for outsourcing REPS in the future. It is under review and presented to the Board in March 2025. 

The scope for the REPS Phase-2 was agreed upon, with a focus on four (4) key areas over the next 12 months –

• An assessment of the payment system operated in PNG against the internationally recognized Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI) standard.
• Development of a Business Case to determine whether BPNG should invest additional funds to make the card switch PCI/DSS compliant so that it is able to process EMV (scheme) cards. This is being driven by the industry moving away from mag-stripe cards, which are susceptible to fraud, towards EMV chipped cards which are safer but do incur additional fees.
• Implementing the lessons learned from the pilot of the Instant Payments Transaction (IPT) and addressing the shortfalls before moving the system into full production later in the year. The focus of this activity is to provide an Instant Payments platform that supports digital and mobile payments, and allows for a wider range of payment services to support the objective of financial inclusion.
• Development of a Business Case to determine the viability of offering a white label service for the onshore production and settlement of chipped cards on behalf of all card issuers in PNG.

In spite of the above developments, the Bank of PNG Board met on 12 September and reviewed the National Payments Strategy.

The Board noted that financial inclusion was integral to the Strategy and required more focus, in particular how the instant payments gateway would increase financial inclusion. Financial inclusion should be the overarching objective of the Strategy, and that more consideration needed to be given as to how the Strategy would increase it through the steps proposed. 

The Board asked for more information about the profitability or otherwise of the existing payments systems or channels including REPS and KATS that could be used as a baseline for future development including a strong business case for the provision of subsidized services and how it would impact financial inclusion. The Board asked to strengthened summary of the strategy and work-plan for 2025-2026, and a developed business case including costings, staging and timeframes for 2025. They asked for further consultation, particularly regarding the ICT requirements.

A working group was formed to review the Strategy and develop the additional information for the Board, and in particular the business cases.

Statistics from all Participating Institutions[1]

(BSP, Kina, NCSL, WPC, MiBank & NBC)

Total Values and Volumes Processed by National Switch

Table 1. REPS Summary Statistics

Total Transaction Volumes		IPT Values
Period	Domestic Debit Cards	Instant Payment Transactions (IPT)	Total (PGK)	Average Transaction Value (PGK)
2019[2]	4,336,050	N/A	N/A	N/A
2020	13,825,844	N/A	N/A	N/A
2021[3]	18,118,532	211	84,751	402
2022	25,937,214	779	358,373	460
2023	28,611,453	570	208,836	366
2024	29,100,622	607	251,576	414
2025[4]	4,445,909	0[5]	0	N/A
January	1,529,764	0	0	N/A
February	1,449,718	0	0	N/A
March	1,466,427	0	0	N/A

[1] Table 1 statistics “Excludes” transactions between Kina Bank and MiBank. Refer Table 3.

[2] On 21st July 2019, National Switch went live with BSP, Kina Bank and NCSL. The other three (3) new members, namely Westpac, NBC and MiBank were connected on 01st September 2019.

[3] On 28th March 2021, Instant Payments Transactions (IPT’s) went live.

[4] The 2025 figures are up to end of March

[5] There are no IPT transactions since September 2024 due to NCSL and NBC making a decision to disconnect from REPS IPT services pending the review NPS and a IPT solution by BPNG.
 

Table 2. Debit Card Statistics

[6] On 21st July, National Switch Went-Live with BSP, Kina Bank and NCSL. On the 01st of September 2019, three additional institutions, Westpac, NBC & MiBank joined the National Switch and following on 22nd September Kina Bank acquired the Retail business from ANZ Bank. This resulted to substantial increase in the volumes of transactions switched via the National Switch.

[7] Beginning year 2022 - POS BI was part of ATM BI calculations effective 29 Mar 21 to 31 Dec 21. It was then captured as separate item column effective 01Jan22 under POS BI. The statistics also reveals that most cardholders use POS to check their balances instead of ATM’s.

[8] Tisa Bank & Credit Bank were connected to the National Switch on 8th July & 15th July, respectively.

[9] March 2025 – the National Switch processed over K16.1b. The volumes processed during the same period was over 91.8 million (chargeable) & 32.4 million (non-chargeable) transactions.

Chart 1. REPS Charts from all participating Institutions

This chart indicates the monthly volumes by type of cards used for payment and aggregate values in K’ millions.

NB: Monthly industry values (K’ millions) shown in this chart, when added together month by month since go-live in July 2019, will equate to the cumulative values (K’ millions) shown in the statistics table on the previous page. 

In April 2021 REPS introduced the Point of Sale- Balance Inquiry (POI-BI) transaction. The figures above for ATM Bal Inquiry include the POS BI volumes from April 2021 onwards. As this transaction has no fees it has been popular with end-customers and its impact can be seen from May onwards. 

Volumes were particularly high in the December festive season and have returned to normal trend in January. Note as well that POS BI was effectively separated from ATM Bal Inquiry and captured as a separate line item effective Jan-2022.

Note: The black trend-line on the graph shows POS Balance enquiry (Not chargeable) segregated and reported separately beginning in January 2022 – Refer to Table-2. April 2023 indicates a spike in the POS BI transactions due to upgrade of BSP’s Core Banking Services early April that affected BSP customer’s mobile banking and Internet banking services.

The graph shows a steep decline in POS Balance enquiry volumes (Not chargeable) toward the end of 2024 with BSP ceasing POS Balance enquiry using its POS devices. 

With Kina Bank decommissioning the use of its local debit cards (magstripe) in October 2024 and issuing Visa Debit Cards, showing a decline in POS Purchase with Cash Back transactions and POS Purchase transactions volumes. Also, shows a gradual decline in industry values.

MiBank Transactions with Kina Bank

In August 2020 Kina Bank and MiBank commenced a business arrangement relating to card transactions for the MiBank customers to be routed via Kina Bank. The arrangement means:

1. REPS sends all MiBank card transactions to Kina Bank, who in turn sends them to MiBank;
2. When MiBank customers use Kina Bank terminals they are routed directly to MiBank and they are not sent to REPS. 

As a part of this arrangement MiBank, as the card Issuer, has agreed to have the transactions performed on Kina Bank terminals charged by BPNG in the same way as if they were processed using REPS. 

These transaction volumes are reported to BPNG every day. Table 3 contains these statistics. These transactions are in addition to the volumes shown in Tables 1 & 2.

Table 3. Statistics from MiBank & Kina Bank

Total Values and Volumes Processed by National Switch

VOLUMES								VALUES
ATM With drawal	ATM Bal Enq (Not Charged)	Cumul  ative BI	POS - Purch & Cash Adv + Cash Back	POS Purchase	Chargeable Industry Volumes [1]	Chargeable Cumulative Industry Volumes	Total Volumes	Cumulative Total Volumes	Industry Values  (PGK'm)	Cumulative Industry Values (PGK'm)
2020	10,925	4,862	12,732	5,514	6,541	22,980	22,980	27,842	27,842	13.63	13.63
2021	47,054	18,422	23,284	29,960	34,833	111,847	134,827	130,269	158,111	52.82	66.45
2022	98,470	40,004	63,288	73,698	82,326	254,494	389,321	294,498	452,609	112.25	178.66
2023	130,043	52,066	115,354	107,843	145,229	343,348	732,669	435,181	887,790	137.61	324.75
2024	146,245	52,369	167,723	161,308	192,051	499,604	1,272,040	551,973	1,439,763	159.46	482.63
2025[10]	37,481	12,459	180,182	38,514	45,780	397,506	1,669,546	134,234	1,573,997	39.99	522.61
Jan	12,146	4,352	172,075	12,774	15,135	40,055	1,312,095	44,407	1,484,170	14.21	496.84
Feb	11,904	3,708	175,783	12,004	14,470	38,378	1,350,473	42,086	1,526,256	12.87	509.71
Mar	13,431	4,399	180,182	13,736	16,175	319,073	1,669,546	47,741	1,573,997	12.91	522.61

[10] The 2025 statistics only shows the accumulated totals to end of March 2025.

Chart 2. REPS Charts on transaction between MiBank and Kina Bank.

This chart indicates the monthly volumes by type of cards used for payment and aggregate values in K’ millions for MiBank & KINA. 

 

NB: December 2022 monthly industry values (K’ millions) shown on chart 2 reflects an increase in value due to festive spending by MiBank customers. In 2024, industry values returned to normal pattern. Transaction volumes for July are higher than June.

Payment Systems Department

09th April 2025