Cybercrimes now ‘more diabolical’
Filipinos have taken to digital payments like a duck to water, so much so that as of 2024, more than 57 percent of all retail transactions in the Philippines are now done digitally, surging from a mere 1 percent in 2013.
The government bureaucracy is even ahead of the curve, with an impressive 97.2 percent of all of its disbursements processed via electronic means at the end of 2024, according to the 2024 Status of Digital Payments in the Philippines report of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
As for individuals, their share of digital payments has gone up to 72.2 percent.
Automated teller machines are also no longer the primary point of financial transactions as fund transfers completed via InstaPay–the real-time payment mechanism catering to transactions worth a maximum of P50,000–have overtaken them in terms of volume and value of withdrawals since 2020.
Such rapid adoption of digital payments by individuals and institutions has been a source of delight for the BSP that initially expected that just 52 to 54 percent of retail transactions would shift to digital by 2024 as set under the Philippine Development Plan 2023 to 2028.
But the growing momentum in the shift toward electronic payment channels has also become a cause of growing and legitimate concern.
Cyber mercenaries
This, as the impressive growth inevitably comes together with rising cybersecurity risks that the BSP wants contained so that the Philippines can maximize the benefits of the new technologies.
Indeed, as the public and private sector ramp up innovations in digital payments, cybercriminals have sharpened their skills, too, preying on Filipinos who have shifted to the digital space to conduct not just payments but much of their personal and professional lives.
Technology giant Microsoft underscored this threat in its latest Digital Defense Report, saying that as digital transformation continues to accelerate, cyber threats are increasingly challenging both economic stability and individual safety.
“Adversaries, whether nation-states, criminal syndicates, or commercial cyber mercenaries, are leveraging emerging technologies to attack with both greater volume and more precision than ever before, often by exploiting the trust that underpins our digital lives,” it said.
“Cyber threats are rapidly evolving from technical problems affecting business to events impacting all aspects of our society,” added Microsoft.
Coordinated strategy
The BSP, which has been leading the shift to digital as part of its vision for a “cash-lite” Philippines, is fortunately cognizant of these mounting threats and has identified managing cybersecurity risks as a foremost challenge as it recommits to protecting consumers amid accelerating innovation.
This is paramount with the number of Filipino adults with a formal bank account almost doubling to 56 percent in 2021 from 29 percent in 2019.
Such a coordinated strategy “emphasizes responsible innovation, close collaboration with stakeholders, and alignment with global best practices, building a payments ecosystem that is secure, inclusive, and efficient,” the BSP stressed.
This will complement plans under the 2024 to 2029 Financial Services Cyber Resilience Plan, the BSP’s “proactive response to the growing complexities of cyber threats” that was launched on Aug. 6, 2024.
The cyber resilience plan covering the financial institutions under the BSP’s supervision seeks to combat cybercrimes that it said then had become “more diabolical” and even more so today with the entry of artificial intelligence tools.
FortiGuard Labs said in its Cyberthreat Predictions Report for 2026 that armed with the power of artificial intelligence, cybercrime is evolving into a fully industrialized enterprise that allow criminals to attack at a much a much faster speed.
Ambitious target
This makes it imperative for the public and private sectors to be proactive and to invest in strengthening their shields to protect their customers’ data and accounts from being infiltrated.
Indeed, while Filipino individuals and institutions have been making the digital shift at a faster rate than expected, there remains some hesitation to adopt these new technologies.
That lack of trust or fear in using them because they might lose their money or records is a considerable barrier to be overcome.
The BSP, after all, has set an ambitious target of digitalizing as much as 70 percent of retail payments by 2028, a goal that would be impossible to achieve without robust cyberdefenses and antifraud mechanisms that public and private institutions should closely work together to mount and constantly strengthen.
As BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said, safety in payments, whether digital, physical, or cross-border, was “nonnegotiable.”
Progress, he added, such as digital transformation and the continued expansion of the digital payment landscape, should not come at the cost of consumer protection or systemic stability.
