UnionPay wants in on PH market

As the Philippines starts innovating its payment industry, payments network UnionPay International is setting its sights on the country.

“We want to see how we can use innovation to help markets, countries, in their payment systems, to see how we can actually help them, especially the Philippines, in their journey toward cashless and electronic payments as we move forward,” said UnionPay International deputy general manager Vincent Ling.

UnionPay International signed an agreement with BankNet Philippines and has cards being issued by BDO, BOC Omnipay, PNB and RCBC Bankard. It wants to bolster its card issuance by expanding its prepad, debit and credit portfolios.

“That’s where we will be able to unveil our card platform systems to the members of Bancnet so they will able to issue cards on a massive scale to those people who don’t have access to a basic banking account,” said Ling.

Ling said the benefit of issuing prepaid cards through these partner banks is that these card owners need not keep a maintaining balance and transactions can be completed without using cash. These are also reloadable in sari-sari stores.

He added that Filipino tour- ists who frequently visit Southeast Asian countries can use their cards in their purchases in partner-stores and would not have to worry about going to money changing shops if they run out of the local currency.

He explained that this is part of UnionPay’s strategy to accommodate payment options in tailoring local needs to localize the business and increase its number of card issuances.

“First of all, we want to localize our business. We want to have as many cardholders as we have in each of the markets that we operate in. Second, we want to also bring offers across the region, across the world,” Ling said.

During the opening of the Innovation Summit exhibit on Tuesday, UnionPay unveiled its QR code payment system.

By scanning a mobile banking application that supports QR code, consumers can make real-time transactions without any charge when making purchases.

“Coupled with a rising smartphone penetration rate, QR code payment has the potential to drive more connections between businesses and consumers through secure and easy-touse digital payment solutions,” Ling said. /