PESONet, Instapay transactions hit P5.37 trillion

CEBU, Philippines —  Electronic fund transfer service providers PESONet and InstaPay registered a combined transaction value of P5.37 trillion in the first seven months of 2022, a 43 percent increase from the values recorded during the same period of 2021.

Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP) latest record showed that PESONet and InstaPay also recorded more than 348 million transactions in January to July this year, up by 24 percent from the same period last year.

PESONet and InstaPay are automated clearing houses, launched under the BSP National Retail Payment System (NRPS), which promotes a safe, efficient, affordable, inclusive and reliable retail payment system. 

PESONet enables high-value transactions and may be considered as an electronic alternative to the paper-based check system. 

InstaPay is a real-time, low value electronic fund transfer facility for transactions up to PHP 50,000 and is most useful for remittances and e-commerce.

For PESONet, the value of transactions grew to more than PHP 3.46 trillion in the first seven months of 2022, up by 47 percent from the same period in 2021. The volume of PESONet transactions, on the other hand, rose to 48 million transactions, up by 22 percent from the same period last year.

The increase in PESONet transactions was mainly driven by state-run pension fund disbursements facilitated by the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), which began in September 2020. The disbursements were done twice a month with an average disbursement volume of 1.5 million transactions valued at PHP 6.8 billion from for the period covering January to July 2022

For InstaPay, the value of transactions grew to around PHP.1.91 trillion in the first seven months of 2022, up by 37 percent from the same period in 2021. The volume of InstaPay transactions expanded to more than 300 million transactions in the first seven months  of the year, a 25 percent increase from the same period last year.

The BSP said that the rise in InstaPay transactions is mainly attributed to the wide use of internet banking and e-money transactions for domestic remittances, e-commerce, bills payment, and other immediate low-value payments.

These reported increases  in PESONet and InstaPay support the BSP’s Digital Payment Transformation Roadmap, which aims to digitalize at least 50 percent of the total volume of retail payments and to onboard at least 70 percent of Filipino adults to the financial system through the ownership and use of a transaction account by 2023.