PayMaya teams up with BIR for tax payments

A tech company has teamed up with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to ease the payment of taxes.

In a statement on Monday, Sept. 30, mobile wallet app PayMaya said account holders will soon be able to transmit income tax payments through the app’s Pay Bills feature.

The feature will initially benefit individuals that handle their own tax payments, like business owners and self-employed professionals like doctors and lawyers.

Orlando Vea, PayMaya founder and CEO, said with the app’s partnership with BIR, “the quality and efficiency of government services are vastly improved.”

This, he said, “will help drive our competitiveness as a country.”

He said PayMaya was “proud to be partners with the government in not just improving service delivery, but also ensuring transparency of services with the help of digital technology.”

PayMaya, which has the backing of China’s Tencent and PLDT Inc., is aggressively ramping up its presence as are its rivals in the financial technology space.

For PayMaya, the initial goal is to reach 40 million users by 2022 and P1 trillion in transactions by 2023. It plans to do so by tapping more partners, like the BIR.

 “Having more digital payment options is part of the government’s efforts to drive ease of doing business in the country and help make tax payments more convenient for Filipinos,” BIR Commissioner Caesar Dulay said in the same statement.

“With our partnership with PayMaya, even those who are not within reach of a bank branch can make their tax payments on time, wherever they may be,” he added.

PayMaya said the tie-up was in sync with the government’s goal to bring its services into the digital realm.

The partnership is supported by the E-PESO project of the United States Agency for International Development./TSB