The new e-payment guidelines set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will ensure stability of the country’s payments system, said BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno.

“The new set of guidelines is expected to strengthen the credit and settlement risk management of BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) participating in automated clearing houses (ACHs),” said Diokno in an online press briefing Thursday, Feb. 3.
“This is a key policy initiative toward encouraging the wider use of e-payment channels while ensuring that retail payment systems in the country operate in a safe, efficient, and reliable manner,” he added.
In January, the BSP approved Circular No. 1135 or the guidelines on the settlement of e-payments under the National Retail Payment System (NRPS) framework which established the two ACHs, InstaPay and PESONet.
The circular has identified the responsibilities and minimum requirements for BSFIs participating in the two ACH such as the requirement for clearing participants to maintain a separate demand deposit account (DDA) per ACH, or one DDA for InstaPay and another DDA for PESONet.
The circular has also required the clearing switch operators of ACHs to provide clearing participants with access to timely data allowing them to efficiently monitor their DDA balances against their net clearing obligations.
“The timely monitoring of DDA balances enables participants to place additional funds if the need arises, thereby mitigating settlement as well as reputational risks,” said Diokno.
The circular issuance is in time to the BSP’s launching of the PESONet Multiple Batch Settlement or PESONet-MBS last month. With the batch settlement, BSP will increase the frequency of PESONet settlement to two cycles in a banking day for a faster end-users clearing and settlement.
By BSP definition, batch clearing and settlement of electronic payments pertains to the bulk processing, clearing and settlement of payment instructions at set intervals based on a specified cut-off time. Multiple batch settlement, on the other hand, is a settlement mechanism of electronic payments involving more than one batch settlement cycle in a clearing day.
PESONet is a batch electronic fund transfer which can be considered as an electronic alternative to the paper-based cheque system.
The BSP has achieved its target of reaching 20 percent of digital payments volume by 2020 and even slightly exceeded the target at 20.1 percent. By mid-2023, this will reach 50 percent, based on the BSP Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap.