According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)’s recent data on e-payments, it turns out that the Philippines has seen a dramatic increase of 30.3% in the number of digital payments compared to the total retail costs, which was 20.1% in 2020.
BSP Governor and Executive Director Felipe Medalla claim that this is consistent with the institution’s objective to convert at least 50% of its payments into digital form by 2023Â to meet the “BSP Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap” that the institution has outlined.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, as well as merchant payments and the payment of employees’ salaries and wages, are three of the most significant contributors to the mass adoption of digital payments as these are considered to be high-frequency, low-value retail transactions, each of which contributes to the growth of digital payments.
Of all the remittances mentioned above, P2P remittances (payments between people) gathered the most significant growth at 268.6%, followed by employee wage at 170.2%, and finally, merchant payments at 43.8%.
As much as the global health crisis played a critical role in developing this trend, people’s growing access to transactional accounts and their shift to digital payments also played a significant role.
