Interesting Facts About Mobile Banking

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 09^th 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.