PH digital payments up, says UN report
Credit to Author: Mayvelin U. Caraballo, TMT| Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2019 16:17:51 +0000
THE Philippines has made progress in digital payment transactions last year, according to a report from a United Nations (UN) agency commissioned by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
In the report titled “The State of Digital Payments in the Philippines,” the UN-based Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) estimated the share of digital payments to be 10 percent by volume and 20 percent by value in 2018.
“This is nearly 20 times the estimated total monthly volume of digital transactions in 2013,” it said.
In 2013, BTCA revealed electronic payment transactions in the country only stood at 1 percent of the total.
The latest figure translates to about 470 to 490 million payment transactions every month in the Philippines, the report added.
“This phenomenal increase is driven by a surge in digital payments made by individuals. This increased significantly to 12 percent, up from less than 1 percent,” it added.
Of the total volume of digital payments a month in 2018, BTCA said about 400 million are made by individuals, or 85 percent.
Meanwhile, digital payments made by businesses and government contribute the rest at 12 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
The report also disclosed that a 20-percent digitization of payments by value translates to about $2.124 billion in payments in 2018, about four times the value in 2013.
“As you can see, both usage and value have increased, indicating that it is not only being used more frequently, but also that it is trusted with bigger values,” BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said in a press briefing for the report held on Monday.
“Notably, the study also revealed that women in the country are ahead of the men in adopting digital payment solutions,” he added.
BTCA said a higher proportion of Filipino women hold financial accounts than men, with 39 percent of adult women holding such accounts as opposed to 30 percent of adult men.
Filipino women are also more active savers and borrowers than men, through both formal and informal channels. Women save more (61 percent of all adult women) than men (57 percent of all adult men) through formal or informal channels.