For 28 years, BancNet has been enabling its member banks and their customers to transact safe, efficient and reliable delivery of financial services at Automated Teller Machines (ATM) in strategic areas all over the country, point-of-sale (P.O.S.) terminals, and in the recent years, through Internet and mobile banking.
This year marks a monumental milestone in terms of convenient fund transfers, and not just for BancNet, but for millions of Filipinos. Last April, we saw the launch of instaPay, an affordable and real-time electronic fund transfer (EFT) platform which allows real-time e-payments and fund transfer transactions between bank accounts–at low costs, available 24/7. This game-changing electronic infrastructure was built by the country’s sole financial electronic network: BancNet.
InstaPay was built on the vision of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to lead Filipinos to more advanced cashless transactions, raising e-payments to at least 20% of total transactions by 2020.
“The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) designated BancNet early last year as the clearing switch operator (CSO) of the automated clearing house (ACH) for low-value, real time electronic fund transfer called instaPay,” Nestor V. Tan, BancNet’s Chairman of the Board stated. “We are in a unique position to actually influence how our country’s financial industry can evolve. To fulfill our mandate, it is imperative that we keep our financials robust and adopt a different mindset.” Tan shared that their institution focused more on sourcing capabilities rather than building them; more on connectivity rather than competition, and more on product infrastructure rather than product features.
BancNet truly rose to the challenge and strategically built the infrastructure of instaPay. “We built the infrastructure of instaPay to serve as a superhighway for the fast, safe and reliable transfer of low-value funds at real-time. We restructured our facilities and services to focus on cost recovery plus provisions for necessary and continuing investments in capacity, service enhancements and network security,” Tan shared.
Its traditional platforms continue to perform well too. BancNet processed over 630.50 million switched transactions of nearly 72 million debit cards in 2017, which grew by 40.96 million or 6.95 percent greater than the 2016 volume. On the average, BancNet processed 1.72 million switched transactions a day. BancNet’s ATM network also expanded, from 19,894 units in 2016 to 20,123. In terms of its Point-of-Sale (POS) network, BancNet likewise increased from 141,465 terminals to 251,870. This marks a 73.33 percent growth from 141,465 terminals in 2016. BancNet pioneered payment at a shared point-of-sale (POS) network in the country more than two decades ago. BancNet’s membership has grown to 121 members– consisting of banks, cooperatives, electronic money issuers and independent ATM deployers.
“As a result, we delivered a strong financial performance in 2017 with total assets and total equity remaining robust at P1.19 billion and P1.01 billion, respectively. We sustained a steady growth with a 6.95-percent increase in switched transactions during the year,” BancNet president Cezar P. Consing shared.
“The gross revenues in 2017 amounting to P386.32 million, and net income amounting to P80.25 million were lower compared to the previous year, last year ended with a modest return on equity of 7.78 percent,” Consing said. “This is due to an adjustment in BancNet’s switching fees in favor of network participants which in turn, is in line with its consortium’s transformation from a profit-centric company to an industry utility. This underscores our commitment to play a major role in BSP’s vision of a National Retail Payments System and our capability to be the CSO of multiple ACHs. We have been facilitating interbank fund transfers and payment via debit to an ATM account for many years, but we have expanded our responsibilities by being part of the National Retail Payments System (NRPS), a program spearheaded by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which further promotes electronic payments in the country.”
On its 28th year, BancNet has indeed successfully risen to the demands of transformation and evolution in electronic payments and fund transfers.