Bank of China joins InstaPay

MANILA, Philippines — Bank of China-Manila continues to ramp up its initiatives amid its growing digital customer base in support of the initiatives of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to transform the country into a cash-lite economy.

The bank recently announced its interconnection with InstaPay, an electronic fund transfer service, that allows customers to transfer peso funds instantly between accounts of participating BSP-supervised financial institutions.

This also allows the bank’s retail customers to transfer funds from person-to-person (P2P) via account number, QR code, or multi proxy service.

“With rising demand for digital fund transfers over traditional paper transactions, Bank of China continues to realign its processes to effectively engage and support the growing digital customer base,” the bank said in a statement.

With InstaPay, Bank of China will be able to provide a safe, reliable, convenient, and zero-wait fund transfer facility.

Customers could access InstaPay via Bank of China Net and mobile, which are available 24/7. Beneficiaries receive funds in real time. It also has an enhanced safety feature through its ISO20022 message format, which makes InstaPay one of the most secure payment services in the Philippines.

Additionally, the bank could also process InstaPay fund transfers that enables InstaPay payers and payees to use a mobile number or email address in fund transfers instead of bank account number.

“This leads to improved security, enhanced validation, as well as increased adoption and usage of real-time payments,” the bank said.

As Bank of China moves forward its digital transformation journey, it will continually look for ways to better serve its clients in support of the central bank’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap 2020-2023 that encourages the availability of more innovative and responsive digital financial products and services for clients.

“With InstaPay, BOC expands its fund transfer options, improving the banking experience for the convenience of its customers,” it said.

Under the roadmap, the BSP aims to shift 50 percent of total retail transactions to electronic channels and increase the number of Filipino adults with bank accounts to 70 percent by 2023.

With the COVID-19 pandemic serving as catalyst, the share of digital payments to total retail transactions increased to 30.3 percent last year from 20.1 percent in 2020, while the number of banked Filipino adults almost doubled to 56 percent in 2021 from 29 percent in 2019.