BSP, research firm to conduct nationwide survey on ways PH consumers pay

MANILA, Philippines — The central bank is conducting its first nationwide survey of the Philippine consumer payments landscape as part of its thrust to get more Filipinos to use digital means for financial transactions and get more people to open financial transaction accounts.

In a statement, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said its first Consumer Payments Survey is being conducted nationwide in the current fourth quarter of 2020 in an effort to measure the actual use of digital payments by individual consumers aged 15 years old and above.

The regulator engaged the services of Kantar Philippines Inc., an independent market research firm, to conduct the survey operations.

“We strongly encourage the selected individuals to participate in the Consumer Payments Survey,” the central bank said in a statement.

Survey results “will guide the BSP in its various efforts to increase the use of digital payments to at least 50 percent of retail payments,” the BSP said. These would also help “enable at least 70 percent of Filipinos to own financial accounts by 2023.”

The BSP said steps would be taken to safeguard data privacy during the survey and to treat all information collected with confidentiality and use these solely for policy formulation.

“Equally important, the survey will be conducted with utmost adherence to established health protocols,” it said.

“Visits by Kantar researchers to selected households around the country will also be coordinated with local government authorities to ensure safety,” the BSP said.

Earlier this year, the Philippine Statistics Authority approved the conduct of the BSP survey which will also collect information on the awareness, ownership and usage of different payment instruments by Filipino consumers.

Among the payment instruments covered are cash, checks, bank accounts and automated teller machine cards, debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards and mobile money.

The survey aims to identify factors that influence the consumer’s preference for payment instruments or methods.

It also seeks to set the baseline for tracking the impact of the National Retail Payment System framework, particularly volume and value of payments and provide inputs for policies on digital payments.

Data to be collected through the survey included:

• Socio-demographic characteristics of households and its members
• Usage, ownership and preferences in payment instruments
• Volume, value of transactions using different payment modes
• Awareness, usage and future use of interbank facilities
• Awareness, usage and preferences of online currencies

The survey’s target number of respondents is 16,000 nationwide.

TSB