RIZAL Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) announced it has deployed more than 1,400 ATM Go terminals to cover the entire Philippines.
The company said the terminals are deployed to about 1,000 merchants spread across 81 provinces, making RCBC having the most extensive reach using these handheld devices. The lender said its device even services geographically-isolated areas.
As of end-August, ATM Go recorded transactional volume of more than P6.2 billion, growing 32 percent from last year. The lender said it also recorded transaction count at over 2 million, also recording 43-percent growth from last year. More than 60 percent of transactions recorded were from 4Ps Pantawid CCT beneficiaries receiving their social grants from the government.
RCBC said it has also facilitated the digital disbursements of over P20 billion in social grants to more than 5 million household beneficiaries benefitting about 30 million individuals. Through the years, RCBC ATM Go has continuously seen sustained double-digit revenue growth and a compound annual growth rate at 85 percent, the bank said.
“Grassroots-based sachet banking has always been at the core of RCBC’s inclusive innovations. We are on track in doubling the number of our partner merchants and terminals deployed in the next couple of months as our commitment towards empowering mSMEs as merchants as well as enabling underbanked Filipinos with easy and secure access to financial services anywhere in the country,” said Lito Villanueva, RCBC executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer.
ATM Go is a digital-based financial service for remote and unbanked communities all over the country. The Philippines’ first neighborhood ATM enables partner merchants such as cooperatives, microfinance institutions, rural banks, sari sari stores, pawnshops, money service business, supermarkets and other micro small enterprises to offer the services in their respective communities. These partner merchants earn incremental income from transaction fees.
Onboarding partner merchants do not require initial capital or expense for the use of the ATM Go terminal and data connection as these are provided by RCBC for free. All transactions are real time, including crediting to partner merchants’ RCBC settlement accounts.
ATM Go accepts all BancNet cardholders making the service available to any bank-issued prepaid or debit cards to do transactions such as cash deposit and withdrawal, balance inquiry, bills payment and e-load purchase.
Aside from regular ATM services that require ATM cards, ATM Go terminals now allow card-less withdrawals using RCBC banking apps such as RCBC Digital and DiskarTech.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has set its twin outcomes under the Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, that is, converting at least half of retail financial transactions to digital, and at least 70 percent of Filipino adults to have transaction accounts by the end of 2023.
Based on latest BSP statistics, 56 percent of the adult Filipinos are now banked. This is a jump from 29 percent in 2019. Despite the leaps that Filipinos have made in digital finance, there are still 34.3 million Filipinos who are yet to be banked.