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DimauGroup

Payments, crowdfunding and P2P lending

Sevu

A Pacific cross-border payments, crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending platform, with the Reserve Bank of Fiji's FinTech Regulatory Sandbox as the intended route to live testing.

StagePrototypeEntity Programme within Dimau Group Pte LimitedRegulator Reserve Bank of Fiji

The problem and the approach

Remittances are a structural feature of Pacific household income, and the cost of moving small sums between Pacific corridors remains among the highest in the world. Sevu addresses the corridor rather than a single country: Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, with per-country localisation.

The platform combines three functions that are usually separated — cross-border payments, community crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer lending — because in practice Pacific households move between them. The same family that receives a remittance may be raising funds for a funeral, a school fee or an incremental house extension.

Sevu's housing thesis positions Fiji's informal settlement growth as a land tenure problem before it is a construction problem. Microfinance for incremental building is only responsible once tenure is secure; the platform is designed to sequence in that order rather than lend against land a household cannot hold.

A working prototype exists with per-country localisation and a trilingual MSME digital cashbook in English, Hindi and iTaukei.

What has been produced

  • Working prototype with per-country localisation across five Pacific markets
  • Trilingual MSME digital cashbook (English, Hindi, iTaukei)
  • Regulatory sandbox concept notes
  • Fintech and land tenure policy thesis linking tenure security to incremental-build microfinance

Documentation can be shared for technical review on request.

What Sevu is not

Stated so that no reader has to infer it.

  • Sevu holds no licence or authorisation from the Reserve Bank of Fiji.
  • No application has been submitted to the FinTech Regulatory Sandbox.
  • It is not admitted to the Sandbox, and is not live-testing with consumers.
  • It holds no client funds and processes no payments.

Applicable framework

Financial Sector Development Policy Statement No. 2 — FinTech Regulatory Sandbox Guideline (December 2019)

Administered by Reserve Bank of Fiji

The Sandbox admits both regulated and non-regulated domestic entities for live testing of up to twelve months under agreed Sandbox Conditions, following a four-stage process beginning with a preliminary assessment. This is the route Sevu intends to take. It has not yet been taken.

Full regulatory position

Elsewhere in the portfolio