The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is on track in its plan to introduce three additional e-payment streams Bills Pay, Request-to-Pay and Direct Debit possibly in June or until the third quarter this year.
The BSP said Wednesday, May 18, that the three e-payment streams will help “broaden the use of digital payments over the next two years” and achieve the migration of 50 percent of all payment transactions into digital form by next year. As of end-2020, 20.1 percent of retail payments have shifted to e-payments.
During the recent Eastern Communications E-Huddle webinar, BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno has confirmed anew that the central bank and Philippine Payments Management Inc. (PPMI) are all set to launch Bills Pay, Request-to-Pay, and Direct Debit facilities soon.
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 in April 2021 that of the three e-payment channels, the Bills Payment and Request-to-Pay will be launched first, supposedly in the third and fourth quarter last year 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 amortizations 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 authorizing the payees to pull funds from the account of the payors. The facility allows customers conveniently pay monthly bills such as rentals, amortizations, insurance, among others.
The PPMI is BSP’s partner for its three-year Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, an industry-led self-governing body.