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Philippines: More cross-border real-time payments to be implemented
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is ramping up efforts to push cross-border real-time payments with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said the Philippines has begun policy and technical discussions with Malaysia to link the country’s InstaPay with DuitNow.
“This interconnection can be accomplished in two years, depending on the pace of work of the payments industry in both countries,” Tangonan told The STAR.
According to Tangonan, Malaysia has achieved cross-border payments integration with another country in one year.
Likewise, the Philippines is also working to link InstaPay with Singapore’s PayNow.
The country is also pushing an initiative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to develop a multilateral solution connecting the real-time payment systems of participating countries.
The Philippines recently signified interest to join the initiative of the BIS Innovation Hub dubbed as Project Nexus.
Project Nexus, which is a model for connecting national payment systems into a cross-border platform, is moving to testing phase from design phase.
It aims to make it easier for instant payment systems to connect to each other across borders, enabling cross-border payments in less than 60 seconds.
On the sidelines of the G20 Summit in November last year, the BSP signed a deal with its counterparts from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand to deepen cooperation on payment connectivity.
Under its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, the central bank aims to convert 50 percent of total retail payments to electronic channels and increase the number of Filipino adults with bank accounts to 70 percent by 2023.
With the COVID-19 pandemic serving as catalyst, the share of digital payments to total retail transactions grew to 30.3 percent last year from 20.1 percent in 2020, while the number of banked Filipino adults almost doubled to 56 percent.
BSP Governor Felipe Medalla is optimistic that the goals under the roadmap will be achieved before the end year. “We’re sure to hit that before the end of the year,” he said.
Source: https://www.philstar.com/business/2023/03/14/2251419/more-cross-border-real-time-payments-be-implemented