The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is completing two new payment channels to make digital payments more accessible and simpler, as it strives to transfer half of the total retail transactions in the country to electronic channels by the end of the year.
The central bank is collaborating with the payments industry to launch the request to pay and direct debit facilities available this year, according to BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan.
“More advanced work is under way for the request to pay, while an extensive consultation is being undertaken by the payments industry to design the features of the direct debit facility,” Tangonan said.
The request to pay facility will enable payees to initiate collections by simply sending a request to the payor.
On the other hand, it will be more convenient for payors to make payments since they would only need to respond to the payee’s request, without having to initiate the payment.
Meanwhile, the direct debit service will enable consumers to better manage regular payments by simply authorizing the payee to withdraw cash from their accounts.
As outlined in its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, the BSP wants to increase the proportion of Filipino adults with bank accounts to 70 percent and move 50 percent of all retail payments to electronic channels, by the end of 2023.
Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the share of digital payments to total retail transactions increase to 30.3 percent in 2021 from 20.1 percent in the previous year, while the number of Filipino adults with bank accounts almost doubled from 29 percent in 2019 to 56 percent in 2021.
