Digital payments expose back-office gap

The Philippines’ rapid shift to digital payments is creating a new challenge for businesses: keeping their finance operations as digital and efficient as the transactions customers make.

Digital payments accounted for 64.69 percent of retail transaction volume in 2025, up from 57.45 percent in 2024, according to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data. But business payments remained far less digitized, reaching only 18.75 percent of transactions last year, down from 19.8 percent in 2024.

The widening gap is raising concerns over the work that comes after a customer completes a digital payment, particularly reconciliation, settlement tracking and accounting.

Combined InstaPay and PESONet transfers reached P24.7 trillion in 2025, equivalent to nearly 90 percent of nominal gross domestic product (GDP). As transaction volumes rise, businesses increasingly handle payments from QR Ph, e-wallets, cards, bank transfers and over-the-counter channels.

SwiftPay described the resulting challenge as a “reconciliation gap” — the period between payment confirmation and the point when funds are properly recorded and visible in a company’s financial systems.

The company said fragmented payment channels can increase manual work, delay visibility of available cash and raise the risk of errors, disputes and exceptions.

The issue will be discussed at SwiftPay’s “Your payments went digital. Your back office is paying for it” webinar on 8 September, which will examine how enterprises can modernize post-payment operations while addressing fraud monitoring, transaction traceability, consumer redress and ISO 20022.