IF there is one thing everybody learned last year, it is that adapting to the digital world is a must to survive. The same holds for the financial services, given that the technological landscape of the business industry has been seeing further innovations as well.
Philippine Bank of Communications (PBCOM) and Globe Fintech Innovations Inc.-operated GCash are among those industry players who stepped up amid increasing digital demand.
In a virtual panel discussion last week, PBCOM Chief Information Officer Ariel A. Roda said that both the banking industry and customers had to adjust to the new normal amid restricted physical interactions.
“Many customers were also in a difficult situation as to how to continue receiving their banking services if their banks are not as ready to address their needs,” he said.
Financial institutions, Roda observed, have been accelerating their digital transformation to keep up with the changes. He is hoping that all the hard work of the banks when it comes to digitalization will continue to pay off this year.
Roda said that PBCOM has been doing its part to help their clients navigate the digital shift.
“For PBCom, [we] have been very aggressive in pursuing digital transformation,” he said. “For several months prior to the pandemic, we’ve actually been able to set up a lot of alternative channels and self-service channels by which our customers, consumers, and corporates would continue receiving our services.”
In March last year, the bank introduced its mobile application PBCOMobile to address the digital needs of its clients. Over 13,000 customers are now onboarded on this platform as of November 2020.
Through the app, the bank said that even non-PBCOM customers were able to immediately open a savings account.
The customers can deposit checks to their accounts and request a PBCOMobile Mastercard Debit card in the app. The card will be delivered directly to them and will also be linked, activated and controlled securely from the app.
The app also allows online fund transfers to other banks via InstaPay, prepaid reloading, bills payments and account maintenance.
New work setup
The lockdown restrictions also prompted the shift to work-from-home arrangements to keep businesses running. This, GCash Head of Key Merchants and Acquirers Maria Ana Leticia Pascual said, posed challenges for the firm as demand for e-wallet services significantly increased during the pandemic.
“We were lucky enough that everyone actually is quite mobile,” she said, adding that some were still needed to be working on site.
In the past year, the GCash official said that their company was among the industry players that massively grew amid the pandemic. “We had to contend with the increase in usage by our users and increase in new users that were coming,” she explained.
Currently, the e-wallet service provider has over 27 million registered users. Its transactions hit P1 trillion in gross total value in 2020, which double that amount it booked in the past three years combined.
The increase in the number of customers and transactions was driven by the shift to online payments, she said. More customers, Pascual said, have learned to buy their essentials online.
“Thankfully, we were really set up to embrace the needs of people in this particular time,” the GCash official said. “We were lucky in a sense that we had developed a product, thinking the convenience of the people not leaving their homes to do things.”
After being introduced to digital payments, Pascual is expecting that customers will continue to adhere to this payment habit even after the pandemic.
Highlighting security
Both Roda and Pascual underscored the importance of data security when it comes to digital transactions.
“If it is an application that you are going to use . . . make sure the content is authorized,” the PBCom official said. A two-factor authentication is deemed as the minimum level of protection for major transactions, he added.
“You should be expecting the application to have checks on biometrics or pins or recovery codes and so on,” Roda said. “So, if there are any problems, you can recover the account.”
Roda said PBCom’s line is always open for the clients if they wish to change account passwords or request new issuance of cards.
Pascual, meanwhile, said GCAsh has initiatives in consumer education, always reminding clients to never share pertinent information to anyone.
The company has also streamlined its help center in the app to avoid confusion from bogus social media pages.
“We are very much on top of consumer protection . . . our reputation lives and dies with what happens to people’s money,” she said.