The brisk growth of PESONet and InstaPay in 2022 aligns with the BSP’s objective to digitalize retail payment volume and its financial system.
The combined values of PESONet and Instapay transactions surpassed P5.37 trillion in the first seven months of 2022, representing a 43 percent increase over the same period last year.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has a National Retail Payment System (NRPS), which supports a safe, efficient, economical, inclusive, and reliable retail payment system. The NRPS has the vision to bring an interoperable ecosystem that allows seamless electronic fund transfers and payments between and among accounts.
PESONet and InstaPay are automated clearing houses launched as part of that system.
PESONet allows for high-value transactions and might be viewed as an electronic alternative to the paper-based check system. It is also used to account for fund transfer that supports bulk, recurring, and non-time-sensitive payment transactions. The limit per transaction for PESONet is P200,000 on the online platform and P500,000 to a branch.
InstaPay is a real-time, low-value electronic fund transfer service for transactions up to P 50,000, making it particularly helpful for remittances and e-commerce. It also allows customers and businesses to transfer between accounts with real-time confirmation of credit to the payee.
Both systems also have transaction fees with PESONet charging P50 and InstaPay P15, both in the online platform. For their branches, they would both have a transaction fee of P150 based on data provided by the Philippine Savings Bank.
PESONet and InstaPay have been widely used especially now that the world is being modernized by digital transactions. Thus, the transactions for both systems sky-rocketed especially this year.
PESONet
The value of transactions for PESONet grew to more than P3.46 trillion in the first seven months of 2022. It grew by 47 percent from the same period in 2021.
Meanwhile, the volume of transactions rose to 48 million, which is up by 22 percent from the same period last year.
The surge in PESONet transactions was mostly driven by state-run pension fund distributions, which began in September 2020 and were enabled by the Development Bank of the Philippines. For January to July 2022, payouts were made twice a month, with an average disbursement volume of 1.5 million transactions valued at PHP 6.8 billion.
InstaPay
Meanwhile, for InstaPay, the value of transactions rose to around P1.91 trillion in the first seven months of 2022. It grew by 37 percent from the same period in 2021.
The volume of transactions expanded to more than 300 million transactions in the first seven months, which is an increase of 25 percent from the same period in 2021.
BSP said that the increase in InstaPay transactions is mostly due to the widespread usage of online banking and e-money transactions for domestic remittances, e-commerce, bill payment, and other low-value payments.
InstaPay has a lower transaction fee than PESONet, so when it comes to low-value payments, InstaPay is the one that is more widely used.
Pre-pandemic to post-pandemic
BSP data showed that PESONet volume and value data are steady, albeit a bit low-key, during the year 2017 with a slight increase in usage in the year 2019.
The same could be said for InstaPay where volume is around at only 1,740 with a value of P .02 billion.
However, when the pandemic started in 2020, both PESONet and InstaPay’s volume and value of transactions skyrocketed, and it continues to do so until now.
Because of health restrictions from Covid-19 pandemic, usage for both online portals jumpedas they can be used by people for their daily needs and paying their bills on schedule.
The convenience of using PESONet and InstaPay for financial transactions has been enjoyed despite the transaction fees.
These reported growth in PESONet and InstaPay support the BSP's Digital Payment Transformation Roadmap, which seeks to digitalize at least 50 percent of total retail payment volume and onboard at least 70 percent of Filipino adults to the financial system through transaction account ownership and use by 2023.
Tags: #PESONet, #InstaPay, #DigitalTransaction, #Growth