It’s the season of gift-giving! The holiday rush is evident as thousands flock to the mall to do their last-minute shopping for gifts.
If you are one of those who are still unsure what to give to your friends, loved ones, and godchildren this Christmas, then you better watch out for what the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has to say.
“We encourage our countrymen to take advantage of the ease and safety provided by digital finance in sending their cash gifts during the holidays,” the BSP’s latest media advisory said.
To encourage more Filipinos to start giving out digital cash gifts or e-aguinaldo this yuletide season, the Philippine central bank pointed out that the practice can help promote the “efficient” flow of funds in the economy.
“Ninongs, ninangs, and other gift-givers who intend to give cash as pamasko, as well as for Filipinos who want to donate to charitable institutions, can transmit money conveniently through a wide array of digital payment channels available in the country,” the advisory further read.
These include interbank fund transfers through InstaPay and PESONet, electronic money issuers that are more commonly known as e-wallets, and QR Ph, which entails code scanning and offers consumers faster, easier, and cheaper payment options.
E-aguinaldo supports BSP’s thrust for the adoption of digital payments
The giving of e-aguinaldo supports the BSP’s broader thrust to foster the wider adoption of digital payments, which promotes financial inclusion and the efficient flow of funds in the economy.
The BSP pursues this under its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, which aims to convert at least half of the total volume of retail payments into digital form and to onboard at least 70 per cent of Filipino adults to the financial system through transaction account ownership by 2023.
It can be recalled that the BSP launched PESONet in 2017 to enable the government as well as businesses and individuals to initiate electronic fund transfers (EFTs) and recurring payments in financial institutions within the same banking day.
Instapay, on the other hand, was launched in April 2018 as an electronic fund transfer payment system that would enable individuals to wire funds across banks in real-time.
Both of these transactions are currently being supervised by the BSP.
The Philippine central bank also launched QR Ph in November 2019 under BSP Circular No. 1055.
QR Ph was developed as a means for adopting an interoperable common QR code which can be scanned and interpreted by any participating bank or non-bank equated monthly instalments (EMIs) to facilitate a customer’s request for fund transfers and payments.
Given such a feature, a QR Ph code can be used for digital person-to-person (P2P) transfers and person-to-merchant (P2M) payments through the InstaPay rail. QR Ph is based on the Europay-Mastercard-VISA (EMV) standard, the global standard for secure payments.