PESONet, InstaPay transactions surge 38% to P2.54 T
Banks and non-banks’ transactions made through the PESONet and InstaPay reached P2.536 trillion for the first two months of 2024, up by 38.5 percent from P1.831 trillion same time last year.
PESONet is a batch electronic funds transfer service that provides a viable alternative for checks and recurring payments. InstaPay is a real-time, low-value digital payments facility that substitutes for cash transactions.
Based on the latest Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) numbers, the combined volume of both PESONet and InstaPay totaled 202,103,373 versus 116,357,372 in 2023, or an increase of 73.69 percent.
For the month of February 2024, PESONet volume reached 7,788,431, lower than January’s 8,002,919. In value terms, this was worth P735.1 billion which was also lower compared to January’s P797.4 billion.
InstaPay, meanwhile, recorded a volume of 93,126,960 in February, slightly down from January’s 93,185,063. Value-wise, this was worth P496.3 billion in February, also lower from the previous month’s P507.8 billion.
Currently, there are 86 InstaPay participating banks and non-banks of which 22 are big banks; 20 are thrift banks; 18 are rural banks; five are digital banks; and 21 are non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) as e-money issuers.
As for PESONet, there are 109 participating banks and non-banks, of which 40 are big banks; 38 are rurla banks; 18 are thrift banks; five are digital banks; and eight are NBFIs.
The BSP has targeted to migrate 50 percent of all payment transactions into digital form by the end of 2023 and it looked like this goal has been achieved, according to BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto E. Tangonan. The report will be released in July this year as the BSP is still finalizing the data.
Based on the BSP’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap and its National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, by end-2023, half of all payment transactions should be in digital form while 70 percent of adult Filipinos should have formal accounts.
As of the end of 2022, 42.1 percent of all payment transactions have shifted to digital while 56 percent of Filipino grown ups have financial accounts as of the end of 2021.
The share of digital transactions in total payments has been growing steadily with both InstaPay and PESONet. Also, more people are using the QR Ph code for payments.
The shift to e-payments have steadily grown due to the momentum it achieved during the pandemic, when the lockdowns or movement restrictions forced the public to transact digitally.
When the BSP started this, only one percent of transactions was in digital form in 2013. By 2018, the volume increased to 10 percent and then to 14 percent in 2019.
By the time the pandemic hit the globe, digital payments expanded to 20.1 percent of all transactions in 2020 and to 30.3 percent by 2021.