AUTOMATED teller machine (ATM) consortium BancNet Inc. said cashless payments are here to stay even after the pandemic, as people have experienced and gotten used to transacting online during the quarantine.
In a statement on Monday, BancNet CEO Aristeo P. Zafra Jr. said they forecast sustained growth in cashless payments in 2021.
“Customers preferred to go cashless in their payments and we see this trend to continue in the ‘new normal‘ because people have seen the value and experienced the convenience of cashless payments,” Zafra said.
The CEO said that early in 2021, they are already seeing a continued surge of growth in their own platform even as the country went into a more relaxed form of quarantine in January and February this year.
In the first two months of 2021, Zafra said bill payments processed by BancNet nearly doubled to a total of 2.84 million transactions compared to only 1.49 million in the first two months of 2020. Overall, cashless payments processed by BancNet in 2020 more than tripled compared to the volume the year before.
Zafra also said that in the first two months of the year, InstaPay volume reached a total of 54.65 million transactions, 372.23 percent higher compared to 11.57 million in the same period in 2020.
Payments for purchases through point-of-sale machines were also noted to have increased further to more than 15 million in the first two months of the year, which is 1.26 million, or 9.19 percent higher compared to 13.77 million in the same period last year.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin E. Diokno earlier announced his personal goal that half of financial transactions in the country should be digital by the end of his term in 2023.
But because of the economic and health crises, Diokno said this may be achieved sooner than the projection by the end of 2022.
Diokno also reported that coin demand in 2020 fell by 57 percent in volume and 60 percent in value from its level in 2019.
“The BSP expects the transition to gather pace amid the rise in electronic payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. In view of this, the BSP will continue to engage the public to ensure that Filipinos will adjust well to this transformation,” Diokno earlier said.
