BSP toughens oversight rules as Pinoys shift to e-payments

The central bank has rolled out a fresh set of regulations meant to “manage potential systemic risks” in the country’s booming payments industry and that it hoped would boost the public’s confidence in shif­ting more financial transactions to the electronic sphere.

In a briefing, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno said the new Payment System Oversight Framework approved recently by the policy making Monetary Board emphasized the need for greater financial system coordination among regulators.

At present, there are two dominant payment systems in the country—Instapay and PesoNet—which facilitate electronic cash transfers between member financial institutions, but the regulator expects the field to grow and, with the increased competition, the cost of these services to drop.

Under the new rules, regulators could now, among others, designate specific payment networks as “systemically important” operations which would merit closer scrutiny from the central bank, especially if the volume and value of their transactions become large enough to have a broader effect on the local economy.—DAXIM L. LUCAS INQ