MANILA – The time to waive service fees on electronic fund transfers is long overdue, Senate President Francis Escudero said in backing the move of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to remove such charges for personal transactions and payments to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
"I could only hope that the thresholds will be higher and the coverage wider, to benefit more consumers, and expand further the user base of digital payments," Escudero said in a news release.
While the transaction fee on each fund transfer is dismissed by some as negligible, Escudero said, "If you add them up, say a year's worth, the amount could be substantial."
Citing regulator reports, Escudero noted that individual transactions billed by one firm could reach as high as PHP75, while some charge senders as much as PHP600.
"Parang alkyansiya 'yan. Maaring barya-barya lang ang naihuhulog pero 'di mo namamalayan na ang laki na pala ng ipon (It’s like piggy bank. Maybe it’s just coins but you don’t realize the size of the savings) ," he said.
Escudero said with the rapid growth in the utilization of digital payments and electronic fund transfers, "new and appropriate regulations must also pick up speed. These cannot be behind the curve.”
Share of digital payments to total retail payment transactions in the country exploded to close to 53 percent last year, beating the BSP's expectations.
"Ang bilang ng monthly transactions ng mga bagay na pinamili ay mahigit-kumulang na 2.6 bilyon sa taong 2023. Ibig sabihin ay nasa 3.6 milyon na transactions ang nangyayari bawat oras. 'Yan ang snapshot ng migration natin (The number of monthly transactions of purchased items will be more than 2.6 billion in the year 2023. That means there are about 3.6 million transactions happening every hour. That's a snapshot of our migration) toward digital payments," he said.
Escudero said the logic behind the call to collect no fees on person-to-person digital money transfers for personal, family, or household purposes is "solid and unassailable."
"If we want to build our economy from the ground up, this is where these firms are, grassroots and community entrepreneurs, whose cost of doing business will be reduced with the move to zero fees on digital payments," he said.
"Above all, this is the kind of incentive that will not cost the government a single centavo," he added. (Leonel Abasola/PNA)
