Retail e-payments spike in March and April

The Philippines saw a spike in retail e-payments during the lockdown period, with millions of transaction processed via instaPay alone from March to April.

A report from Philippine Payments Management, Inc. (PPMI) showed that in April alone, 8.8 million instaPay fund transfers were processed, which is 2.16 million or 32.18 percent more than the 6.70 million transactions in March.

PPMI is the payment system management body designated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and formed by the payments industry to promote electronic payments in the country under the National Retail Payments System Framework of the BSP.

It directly supervises the InstaPay, which is an electronic money transfer service that enables consumers to send money to accounts in other banks and e-wallets through participating online banking websites and mobile applications (app).

PPMI general manager Carmelita Araneta said that before the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), fund transfers through instaPay grew by only about 10 percent a month in February and March.

To be specific, daily transactions only averaged 200,158 from January 1 to March 16. It increased to 263,588 from March 17 to April 30.

“People’s limited mobility under lockdown made them shift to electronic fund transfer through instaPay which they found convenient and safe as they did not have to leave their homes. They used instaPay to send money to relatives, to pay for essential items they ordered online, and give donations to relief fund drives for covid19- and ECQ-challenged sectors,” Araneta said.

PPMI president Abraham Co said that he sees this trend to continue until the ECQ is lifted, perhaps even beyond, as long as the risk of covid19 persists.

“It will be the new normal,” Co said.

InstaPay was launched by the Bangko Sentral in April 2018 in line with its goal of increasing digital payment transactions to 20 percent of total payment transactions this year.

It marked its second anniversary last month with the alltime-high volume of 8.86 million transactions which is 82.84 percent more than the volume a year ago. The total value of these transactions is over ₱53 billion with an average amount of ₱6,129.00 per transaction. The maximum amount that can be transferred is P₱50,000.00 per transaction.