Sources: Reserve Bank of Vanuatu and provider disclosures, 2024–2025.
How Vanuatu pays
Vanuatu is a small island nation spread across more than 80 islands, and cash remains the main way people pay, especially away from Port Vila and Luganville. Bank and card access is concentrated in the towns, where local banks issue debit cards and tourism businesses take Visa and Mastercard.
Tourism, much of it from Australia and New Zealand, brings most of the card spending, and many ni-Vanuatu work seasonally in both countries and send money home. For a merchant, the value is a clear starting point: international cards and express wallets behind one integration, 3DS on card-not-present payments, and retries across acquirers, with vatu pricing and FX handled for you.
Why merchants run on us here
Cards and wallets live today
International card acquiring and the express wallets, available now.
Built for tourism
Visitors from Australia and New Zealand pay with foreign-issued cards, so routing by card origin matters.
Moving buyers off cash
A trusted card checkout lets a cash-first market book and pay ahead.
Vatu pricing and FX
Price in VUV and settle in your base currency, with FX handled for you.
Payment methods
Cards
Visa
Mastercard
American Express
Discover
Diners Club
JCB
UnionPayBuy Now, Pay Later
Sandbox BNPLDigital wallets
PayPalExpress checkout
Apple Pay
Google PayGateways
Sandbox BNPLPayPal
Airwallex
Stripe
Adyen
Unlimit
Worldpay
Checkout.com
Authorize.net
MPGS
Cybersource
Sandbox GatewayAirwallex (Enterprise)
Braintree
CommerceHub
Fiserve
NMI
Nuvei
OrbitalBuilt for enterprise
Everything it takes to run payments in Vanuatu
Local payment methods are only half the job. We carry the operational weight — acquiring, settlement, FX, licensing and reconciliation — so you can treat Vanuatu like any other market in your stack.
One integration, growing local coverage
Connect once for what's live in Vanuatu today — including international card acquiring — and add local wallets and bank rails through the same integration as we bring them online.
Local acquiring, higher approvals
We route to local acquirers and retry failed payments across alternate rails, so domestic cards and wallets authorize at local rates instead of being declined as cross-border traffic.
Settlement, FX & repatriation
Collect in the Vanuatu vatu (VUV) and settle in your base currency. We handle the FX conversion and the local rules for moving funds out of the country — the part most global merchants underestimate.
Licensing handled locally
We're establishing locally licensed partners so you can process in-country as we expand local coverage — without standing up your own entity or chasing a license.
Payouts & reconciliation
Pay out to sellers and process refunds on the same rails you collect on, and reconcile every flow — pay-in, payout, refund — in one ledger, in local or base currency.
Fraud, disputes & compliance
Real-time screening, chargeback and dispute handling, and KYC/AML that matches local regulator expectations — built in, not bolted on.
Ready to launch in Vanuatu?
Talk to our payments team about going live in Vanuatu — coverage, local acquiring, settlement and timelines for your business.