InstaPay, PESONet fund transfers hit P25T

Filipinos moved more than P25 trillion in funds through the InstaPay and PESONet systems from January to September, as lower transaction fees promote rapid adoption of digital payments.

Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that the combined value of transactions coursed through the two automated clearing houses surged 45 percent from a year earlier to P25.3 trillion.

The number of transactions surged even faster: volumes reached 6.5 billion, up 124 percent year-on-year.

InstaPay, a real-time digital payment system for transactions of up to P50,000, is widely used for retail purchases, toll and ticket payments and e-commerce, supporting micro, small and medium enterprises.

Beating ATMs

The BSP said InstaPay had surpassed automated teller machine (ATM) withdrawals in both volume and value since 2020, when the pandemic pushed many Filipinos to shift away from cash.

That momentum has continued. The value of InstaPay transactions during the January to September period jumped 60 percent to nearly P12.7 trillion from a year earlier, while volumes climbed 128 percent to 6.4 billion.

Meanwhile, PESONet caters to large-value fund transfers, serving as an electronic alternative to the paper-based check system.

Figures showed that funds transferred through PESONet had reached P12.6 trillion as of September, up 33 percent from a year earlier. The system handled 99.4 million transactions, an increase of nearly 16 percent.

The latest data came out months after the BSP had ordered financial institutions to lower fees for digital payments.

Under BSP Circular No. 1238, which took effect on July 4, banks and other BSP-supervised financial institutions must ensure that fees for person-to-person digital fund transfers between accounts held at different institutions do not materially differ from those charged for transfers between accounts within the same institution.

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Digital payments

Because transfers between accounts within the same bank or e-wallet are typically free, the central bank said any additional fee for interbank or interwallet transfers should largely reflect charges paid to the network switch operator.

The BSP also said that while institutions may adopt differentiated pricing based on legitimate business and operational considerations, they must ensure that their fee structures do not result in one group of users unfairly subsidizing another.

Since then, many banks have either waived or lowered interbank transfer fees via InstaPay and PESONet for individual clients.

Based on the BSP’s Consumer Expectation Survey, one in three Filipinos considers high fees a barrier to more frequent use of digital payments.