Lower remittance cost with PESONet

In a bid to provide a more affordable, convenient and safe way to send and receive money, the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) introduced PESONet, the country’s first Automated Clearing House (ACH) under the National Retail Payment System Program (NRPS), to provide Filipino consumers with smarter options in transferring funds.

With PESONet, participating banks are linked with mobile money operators to create a seamless electronic payment system that is safe, reliable, efficient and most of all, interoperable.

Launched last year, PESONet seeks to encourage people and businesses to migrate their money transactions digitally. This ACH is now adopted by local banking and financial institutions and is available in more than 40 banks.

PESONet is devised as a more inclusive platform for electronic fund transfer, thus making monetary transactions such as business-to-business, government-to-government, person-to-government, business-to-person and vice-versa more practical.

Currently, there are 58 financial institutions enrolled with PESONet, 43 of which are already receiving PESONet transactions while 22 have made the system available in both their online and mobile platforms.

Since the payment system is done electronically, which is safer, more efficient and hassle-free. Jonathan Bates, Lazada’s Vice President for Finance said that having their company enrolled in the system makes its transactions easier and faster by removing checque payments and the grueling waiting time from the process.

BTI payments, a major ATM and payments technology in Australia who partnered with local billers such as utility, telecommunications firms and banks also testified to PESONet’s efficacy by citing the system as a safer and more secure platform for their clients to use nationwide.

In addition to this, Philippine Payments Management Inc. (PPMI) Board Chairman Justo Ortiz said the system’s clearing volume grew from 329,906 in November 2017 to 521,551 as of July this year, with more than 95 percent of successful transactions while 2.67 percent failed and the remaining being pending or unknown transactions.

Ortiz also highlighted the system’s value as transaction volume increased from P52.7 billion in November 2017 to P56.5 billion in end of July 2018, which translates to more than P520 billion to date. These figures and statements do not only prove PESONet’s competence but also demonstrate a growing demand for a modernized payment system.

Meanwhile, InstaPay, another ACH under the NRPS framework was also discussed in the forum. While PESONet caters to batch electronic fund transfer, InstaPay focuses on small value payments up to P50,000.

Despite being launched only this year, InstaPay had 30 enrolled participants from the banking and finance sector, with 12 of these institutions being capable of both sending and receiving payments while 18 can only receive payments.