The central bank issued a moratorium on increases in fee rates of financial institutions running the real time, interbank money transfer services, InstaPay and PESONet.
Likewise, banks and non-banks such as e-money issuers (EMIs) have been ordered to keep current charges until 40 percent of all retail payments have migrated into digital or e-payments.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), in a memorandum on Wednesday, Dec. 29, said a moratorium on the increase in the transfer fee for InstaPay and PESONet transactions is effective immediately.
The BSP said banks and EMIs are allowed to waive or reduce their current fees while transfer fees that are currently waived may charge these fees again at the level prior to such waiver of fees.
Based on the BSP’s summary of corresponding fees submitted by BSP supervised financial institutions (BSFIs), as of end-November, InstaPay fees go from P5 to a high of P30 per transaction, while some offer free of service.
Maybank Philippines and Union Bank of the Philippines charge the highest up to P40 and P30, respectively, while East West Banking Corp. and e-wallet StarPay Corp. charge the cheapest at a flat P5 per transaction. InstaPay is a real-time, low value electronic fund transfer (EFT) for transactions amounting up to P50,000 and is useful for e-commerce as well as urgent payment needs.
As for PESONet, which handles a higher volume of transfers, the minimum fee is P10 up to P2,100. Foreign banks may charge in US dollars. There are banks however, that offer free PESONet service for some transactions at the moment, such as Asia United Bank, China Banking Corp., East West Bank, CIMB Bank Philippines, CTBC Bank, Development Bank of the Philippines, HSBC and ING Bank. PESONet is a batch EFT which can be considered as an electronic alternative to the check system.
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, some banks and EMIs waived transfer fees charged on the use of InstaPay and PESONet. Several of these banks and EMIs continued said waiver and the full-scale imposition of these fees is expected to resume in 2022, said the BSP.
BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno, who signed the order on Dec. 28, said in the memo that the moratorium “is expected to not only help the economy but also sustain the momentum in the use of digital payments.”
“The lifting of the moratorium will be reviewed by the (BSP) upon issuance of pricing standard/guidelines or once the volume of digital payments reaches forty percent (40 percent) of the total retail payments in the country, whichever is earlier,” said Diokno in the memo.
The BSP said PESONet and InstaPay participants “are directed, from date of this memorandum, to maintain the transfer fees for person-to-person fund transfers via InstaPay and PESONet” and to disclose to the BSP their fees, including the waiver and reduction in fees.
For BSFIs which have yet to offer lnstaPay and PESONet, the BSP said the initial fees will have to be reported at least 60 days from the day that they plan to impose the fees.
Diokno said the Philippine Payments Management Inc., which oversees the payments industry as a BSP-accredited payment system management body, will monitor the industry for any non-compliance.
The BSP has a goal of migrating at least 50 percent of all retail payments as digital payments by 2023.
In terms of volume, the share of digital payments to total financial transactions has reached 20.1 percent in 2020 from 14 percent in 2019 and only one percent in 2013.