For banks trying to reach the Philippines’ most isolated communities, the challenge is not always the lack of a banking app or digital payment product. Sometimes, it is simply the lack of a reliable connection.
Satellite internet is beginning to change that equation, allowing financial institutions to keep last-mile banking terminals connected even in areas where fiber, landlines and mobile networks remain limited.
RCBC, for example, has integrated Starlink satellite internet into its ATM Go network, according to the bank’s 2025 annual report. The service extends basic banking transactions through merchants such as sari-sari stores, pharmacies, rural banks, groceries and pawnshops rather than relying exclusively on traditional bank branches.
The bank previously reported that about a quarter of ATM Go merchants serving remote areas were already using Starlink connectivity. In Sibutu Island, Tawi-Tawi, RCBC said the service allowed residents to access banking locally instead of spending around ₱5,000 for a trip to the nearest physical branch in Bongao.
As of June 30, 2026, RCBC had 5,086 ATM Go terminals nationwide alongside 471 RCBC and RCBC Microbank branches and 1,518 ATMs.
From more branches to more connected access points
The development illustrates how the definition of banking access is changing.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has long allowed banks to establish branch-lite units, which can offer a more limited range of services than a full branch. Banks are also increasingly combining physical offices with ATMs, cash agents, merchant terminals and digital channels to serve areas where maintaining a traditional branch may be difficult or uneconomical.
But these smaller access points still need connectivity.
The BSP reported that the country had 13,460 banking offices as of June 2025, but their distribution remained heavily concentrated in Luzon. Banking presence in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao remained limited.
Satellite connectivity can therefore act as infrastructure behind the infrastructure. Instead of replacing branches or branch-lite units, it can help banks operate terminals and other digital touchpoints in locations where conventional telecommunications networks are unreliable.
Digital onboarding also depends on connectivity
The same issue applies before a customer even makes a transaction.
Digital onboarding has allowed Filipinos to open accounts without traveling to a branch. The BSP said 59 banks were already offering digital onboarding capabilities as of the second quarter of 2024.
Yet access remains uneven.
The BSP’s 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion Survey found that only half of Filipino adults individually owned a formal financial account. It also found significant geographic differences, with account ownership generally higher in more urbanized regions than in predominantly rural areas.
A bank may be able to offer remote identity verification and app-based account opening, but those tools are less useful when customers cannot maintain a stable connection long enough to complete the process.
Connectivity removes only one barrier
Satellite internet will not solve financial exclusion on its own.
Customers still need appropriate identification, affordable devices, digital literacy and enough trust in formal financial institutions to use the services available to them. Banks also have to maintain cybersecurity, consumer protection and service reliability even when their networks rely on newer connectivity technologies.
What satellite links can remove is one of the Philippines’ most stubborn physical constraints: geography.
For an archipelago where building a full branch or telecommunications tower in every isolated community is unrealistic, the next phase of financial inclusion may depend less on putting a bank building on every island and more on making sure that the banking access points already reaching those islands can stay connected.
