The BSP, central bank of the Philippines, said that the three e-payment streams will help broaden the use of digital payments from 2022 to 2024 and achieve the migration of 50% of all payment transactions into digital form by 2023. As of end-2020, 20.1% of retail payments have shifted to e-payments. The interoperable Bills Pay and Request-to-Pay facilities will run through InstaPay while the Direct Debit is via PESONet.
The BSP had originally announced that the Bills Payment and Request-to-Pay will be launched first, supposedly in the third and fourth quarter of 2021, but there were delays in the testing stage. The pilot stage for the Bills Pay were also scheduled in 2021.
The Request-to-Pay facility allows payers to effectively manage recurring, non-urgent bills such as rents, loan amortisations, and insurance premiums. The PESONet has recently adopted a multiple batch settlement or MBS scheme.
The Bills Pay facility, meantime, allows customers to pay their bills such as electricity, water, and telephone bills even if the transaction accounts of the customer and the biller are in different payment service providers. The facility will enable a more efficient collection among billers.
As for Direct Debit, customers can better manage their recurring payments such as monthly rentals by simply authorising the payees to pull funds from the account of the payors. The facility allows customers conveniently pay monthly bills such as rentals, amortisations, insurance, among others.
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