Mobile banking is the provision of
banking services through mobile technology and mobile devices including
smartphones. Let us look at a few facts and developments with relation to
mobile banking and mobile money in the Philippines:
▪ As of end-June 2015,
there were 638 operating banks with 9,890 branches and 268 of these banks were
offering various e-banking services such as electronic wallet, cash/remittance
products, Online banking, phone banking, mobile banking and hybrid mobile/Internet
via BancNet-MegaLink switch banking service in the Philippines.
▪ It has been estimated
that more than a third of Philippines' 1,600 cities and municipalities do not
have banks. However, the ratio of mobile SIM cards to the Philippine population
was at about 114 percent.
▪ According to the World
Bank, about 50 million Filipinos do not have a bank account. This has led the
Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP) to allow banks and mobile services companies
to offer mobile-banking accounts in 2009 through its “Guidelines on Use of
Electronic Money”.
▪ By 2014, there were 27
million mobile money accounts, more than half the 45 million traditional bank
accounts in the country. The value of transactions conducted through these
accounts rose to just under US$700 million a month.
▪ According to a study
done by the Better Than Cash Alliance, it is estimated that 99% of payment
transactions per month are done in cash, with businesses and individuals making
only 1% and 0.3% electronic payments respectively in 2013. E-commerce also
makes up less than 1% of total commerce.
▪ As a key part of its
commitment to the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, the BSP together with industry stakeholders, launched
the National Retail Payment System (NRPS) Framework on the 09th of
December 2015 at the BSP Executive Business Center.
The vision of the NRPS is to create
a safe, efficient and reliable electronic retail payment system that is
interconnected and interoperable. With the NRPS, the BSP hopes to increase the 1%
share of electronic retail payments to at least 20% by 2020. The full NRPS
could be up and running by mid-2017.
Mobile banking in the Philippines
is offered through the following forms:
▪ Through SMS –
Here, you use SMSes to conduct transactions, both financial and non-financial.
Take the PNB Mobile Banking service, for instance. Through this service you can
enquire about your account balances and last transactions / remittances,
transfer funds immediately to family and friends and pay bills from wherever
you are.
Another variant of this service is
the SIM Banking service offered by BPI. If you are a subscriber of Globe / TM
or SMART you can access a range of banking services through your phone's SIM
menu. If, for instance, you are a SMART subscriber, you can make balance
enquiries, transfer funds, make bill payments, reload prepaid phone / SMART Bro
and reload SMART Money.
▪ Through your phone's
browsers – Citibank offers a Banking via Mobile Browser service (in
addition to its apps). Through this Mobile Banking service you can pay bills, transfer funds, view account details/summary and
some more transactions.
▪ Through Apps –
Many banks offer mobile apps which you need to download and use. BPI, in
addition to its SIM Banking service, offers mobile banking apps for Android,
iOS, Windows and BB10 OS phones. HSBC offers its Mobile Banking app, for iOS
and Android phones, through which you can access all your HSBC bank and credit
card accounts.
