BSP hits 50% target in digitized payments
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) managed to hit its goal of shifting half of total retail payments to digital channels in 2023, with more small businesses likely to onboard moving forward.
BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said significant strides in digital payments were crucial in the implementation of the central bank’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap.
“In 2013, we started with a mere one percent share of digital to total retail payments. Fast forward to 2022, and we saw a whopping 42.1 percent share in digital retail payments transactions,” Tangonan said.
“I believe we reached our 50-percent target by the end of 2023,” he said.
This as more Filipinos embraced digitalization during and after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The BSP is also optimistic that the sustained rise of digital payment technologies will continue to facilitate the delivery of financial services to the unbanked sector, as well as to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Such a trend was also seen at the grassroots level especially in public markets where digital platforms under the Paleng-QR PH Plus are being utilized for seamless and cashless transactions.
Apart from Paleng-QR, the BSP also introduced the Bills Pay PH to unify the country’s fragmented bills payment system and allow users to pay their bills whether or not they have an account with their billers’ payment service provider.
The initiative aims to streamline financial processes and to bridge the gap between those with and without access to financial services, allowing more Filipinos to participate in the formal economy.
As of now, the BSP is already charting the next phase of the country’s digital journey under the 2024-2026 Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap.
Meanwhile, the BSP is working with two other ASEAN central banks in addition to those of Singapore and Malaysia to implement the blueprint for multilateral cross-border payments connectivity.
The blueprint for multilateral crossborder payment connectivity is a deliverable under the Nexus, a project of the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH).
The BSP is one of the participating ASEAN central banks in Phase III of the project, with the others being Bank Indonesia, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bank of Thailand and Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Nexus Phase III, which is set to conclude this quarter, builds on the blueprint and proof-of-concept completed in the first two phases to develop a detailed and near-final specification of Nexus for the five participating ASEAN countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.