The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Department of Trade and Industry on Tuesday committed to further promote digital payments for financial inclusion and growth of micro, small and medium businesses or MSMEs through the launch of the country's first Cashless Expo next month.

Officials of the BSP and the DTI yesterday signed a memorandum of agreement to support each other's efforts for the expo where merchants will be accepting digital payments only.

The expo will be open from 17 to 19 November at the World Trade Center in Pasay City. "Without a doubt, this event will help catapult our mutually reinforcing policy agenda of digital transformation and financial inclusion. It would be an understatement to say that through this event, we are hitting two birds with one stone," BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto E. Tangonan said.

Conversion

The BSP's Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap aims to convert at least 50 percent of all retail payment transactions into digital form this year.

Tangonan said BSP's data have shown encouraging results for quickly surpassing this minimum target post-pandemic.

"As shown by our annual measurement of e-payments adoption, merchant payments continue to comprise almost 58 percent of the total retail payment volume of which 54 percent is digital payments," he said.

In more specific terms, Tangonan said the expo will help MSMEs reach more customers, marketing locally made products and contributing to the country's economic growth through digital payments as a way to tap digital-savvy customers and access business loans.