PLAYING A BIGGER ROLE TOWARDS A CASH-LITE NATION
The financial industry is being driven by rapid technological developments and growing sophistication in consumer needs and wants. Our challenge is to always stay abreast of and adopt the right technologies to address the needs of our members. Weare in a unique position to actually influence how our country’s financial industry can evolve Nestor V. Tan BancNet Chairman of the Board
It is imperative that BancNet keep its financials robust and adopt a different mindset—focusing more on sourcing capabilities rather than building them; more on connectivity rather than competition, and more on product infrastructure rather than product features. BancNet would continue to explore more strategic partnerships to deliver shared services that will expand its footprint while reducing costs to members
The past year was a period of transition for BancNet— redefining its business to be an industry utility for its shareholders and participants.
BancNet, the country’s sole electronic payments network, restructured its facilities and services to focus on cost recovery, plus provisions for necessary and continuing investments in capacity, service enhancements and network security.
As the company celebrates 28 years in the industry, it is at a crossroads. It is becoming an even bigger player in the country’s thrust to become a more cash-lite nation.
Last year, BancNet became the clearing switch operator for realtime electronic funds transfer, dubbed instaPay, under the National Retail Payment System ( NRPS), which aims to further promote electronic payments in the country. ( Turn to Page B3- 3 for more on instaPay)
“The financial industry is being driven by rapid technological developments and growing sophistication in consumer needs and wants. Our challenge is to always stay abreast of and adopt the right technologies to address the needs of our members. We are in a unique position to actually influence how our country’s financial industry can evolve,” said Nestor V. Tan, BancNet’s chairman of the board.
Through the years, BancNet has successfully risen to the demands of transformation and evolution.
As a result, we delivered a strong financial performance in 2017 with total assets and total equity remaining robust at P1.19 billion and P1.01 billion, respectively. We sustained a steady growth with a 6.95-percent increase in switched transactions during the year.
In the past year, BancNet processed over 630.50 million switched transactions of nearly 72 million debit cards, which grew by 40.96 million or 6.95 percent greater than the 2016 volume. Despite the huge transaction volumes, the average switch availability rate stood at a high 99.84 percent.
On the average, BancNet processed 1.72 million switched transactions a day but volume surged to a recordbreaking 4.23 million transactions on December 15, 2017, the payday nearest to Christmas.
“To fulfill our mandate, it is imperative that we keep our financials robust and adopt a different mindset. We should focus more on sourcing capabilities rather than building them; more on connectivity rather than competition, and more on product infrastructure rather than product features. We should explore more strategic partnerships to deliver shared services that will expand our footprint while reducing costs to our members,” said Cezar P. Consing, BancNet president.
BancNet continued to be a billionpeso company with total assets of P1.19 billion at yearend.
BancNet’s ATM network further expanded from 19,894 units in 2016 to 20,005. The Point-of-Sale (POS) network likewise increased—from 141,465 terminals to 245,202. In the past year, membership grew to 119, consisting of banks, cooperatives, electronic money issuers and independent ATM deployers.
Three new members signed up during the year: Dumaguete Cathedral Credit Cooperative, ING Bank, and Megalink, an independent ATM deployer.
Tan said: “As we look towards the future, we believe our opportunities to grow are as big as they have ever been—there is still an enormous amount of payments that can be transformed to electronic form, for one. Driven primarily by e-commerce and mobile technology, we have more ways to capture that opportunity than we have ever had.”