The global payments technology company Visa Inc. said robust domestic consumption and expanded use of electronic payments products added an estimated P16 billion to the country’s local output, or the gross domestic product, between 2008 and 2012, according to Moody’s Analytics.
The technology number cruncher is a unit of the global credit watcher Moody’s Investor Service that makes a lot of economic forecasting for clients around the world.
Its assessment of the state of the e-payments environment in the Philippines comes on the heels of a separate Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas consumer expectations report showing increased consumer purchases among Filipinos in the months ahead.
“The increasing affluence among the middle class in the Philippines will continue to push credit-card usage. Though cash still accounts for 82 percent of consumption expenditures in the country. Electronic payments are on the rise, particularly when it comes to, for example, purchasing air tickets or using credit cards when traveling abroad,” a Visa executive said.
Visa has seen the effects of rising consumer spending as its total credit-card transactions grew by 25.5 percent in 2014.
He said the move toward a cashless society has proven beneficial to society as a whole.