MANILA – The efforts of both the government and the private sector to increase digital payments in the country have resulted to higher value of digital transactions.
In his speech during the first Digital Payments Leaders’ Summit held at the central bank office in Manila on Monday, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) governor Benjamin Diokno said the value of e-payments in the country only reached eight percent in 2013.
Now, the value of digital payments in the country jumped from eight in 2013 to 20 percent in 2018.
E-payment usage was only one percent in 2013, but it has increased to 10 percent in 2018.
These figures are based on the latest study of the United Nations-based Better than Cash Alliance.
“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,” Diokno added.
The result of the study also showed that women are more advanced in adopting digital payments options, which Diokno said is a positive development since this “affirms that significant progress towards the shift from cash-heavy to a cash-lite economy is attainable.”
BSP recently launched the EGov Pay and piloted P2P payments using the machine-readable quick-response code.
“Through the help of our industry partners, especially the digital payments leaders, we hope not only to achieve our goal of a cash-lite economy sooner than later. And ultimately enable and empower more Filipinos to reap the benefits of a growing economy through digital payments,” he added.
(PNA)
