News

When athletes, officials and supporters from 24 nations arrived in Honiara for the 2023 Pacific Games in November, the first the city had hosted, officers at the border could check each of them in within seconds, and check them out again when the Games were over.

Papua New Guinea’s Immigration and Citizenship Services Authority (ICSA) supported its Solomon Islands counterpart through the Games with technical and material assistance. At its heart was a travel app, supplied with tablets and computers, that let officers at the airport load participants’ details before they arrived and issue visas as they stepped off the plane (ICSA Report Card 2023). We built the system with ICSA.

Built for the arrivals hall

The app captures each traveller’s details from their travel documents in moments, so officers confirm a record and move on, and it keeps the queue moving even when the network drops out. The same system recorded departures at the end of the Games.

Processing fell from 43 seconds to 10 for delegations from 24 nations, as PNG Business News later reported, and thousands of athletes, officials and visitors passed through it.

Two agencies, one Games

The app was launched by Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea in August 2023 (In-Depth Solomons), under a memorandum between the two immigration services that covered support for the Games. ICSA officers worked alongside Solomon Islands Immigration on the Games’ operating procedures and training, and were deployed to Honiara while the Games ran.

It was NiuPay’s first work beyond Papua New Guinea, and it shaped what came next: in 2025, the MyICSA Analysis Engine brought AI to Papua New Guinea’s own visa decisions. Read more about our visa and border work.