BY MAVIS NISHIMURA PODOKOLO
A Go-money scheme for school fees was clarified to this paper yesterday by the Value Chain team leader Hubert Lovi.
He revealed that the initiative was set in place due to school fees being regarded as the biggest yearly expense in the Solomon Islands.
Mr Lovi said this creativity was developed to assist parents who are located in rural areas in terms of reducing some of their costs associated with paying of school fees, save time, money and efforts and options of installment paying.
Also there is no need to take time off at work, payment can be done anytime anywhere and prevent late fee payment and lessen the standing queue issue at the banks.
He explained the pilot processes are parents will be issued a unique student ID by school and they will pay via mobile phones.
After that parents are required to enter unique student ID in Invoice number field amounts and complete transaction using MSPIN which means parents dial *269# and select Pay Bill option and from the list of billers parents will be given options to select their school’s name.
“From then Supervisor logs in to internet banking checks account statement referencing unique student ID which will be resulted parents to receive SMS on mobile phone and then he /she will forwards SMS to a pre-designated mobile number of supervisors at school and they ( school) will give the physical receipt to students.
“These processes can be done through using ANZ goMoney which is the mobile banking platform of the ANZ bank,” he said.
Lovi said the programme has been piloted in two of the schools within the capital, King George Sixth School and St Nicholas College, and a dialogue to have it piloted on schools under the Honiara City Council is still underway.
The scheme was designed through the partnership of Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) Bank and the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP).
