THE PESONET service may be able to process more than one settlement in a day within the year in a move to ramp up electronic transactions, PESONet Steering Committee Head John Cary L. Ong said, which is in line with the central bank’s drive to make the country cash-lite.

“We are targeting Q3 for multiple settlements,” Mr. Ong said in a text message on Monday.

Mr. Ong said they will also assess enabling 24/7 availability, putting it closer to the frequency of InstaPay.

“We will start with two to three settlements a day. But the goal is to have more frequent settlements as well as 24/7 availability,” he said.

PESONet is the electronic fund transfer (EFT) service under the central bank’s National Retail Payment System (NRPS) that allows for a batch of fund transfers to be credited to the receiver by the end of the banking day, suited for business to business transactions.

Its retail counterpart, InstaPay, enables real-time fund transfers for transactions amounting to less than P50,000.

Allowing multiple settlements in day in PESONet will be in line with the central bank’s target to boost digital payment transactions, according to Mr. Ong.

“This will make PESONet transfers intraday instead of EOD (end-of-day) and should lead to a better experience and hopefully drive up the volumes,” he said.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin E. Diokno has said enabling multiple settlements in a day for PESONet users will allow billers to directly deduct payments from the accounts of consumers who will make authorization for the biller.

There are over 50 banks currently onboard PESONet.

In a previous interview, Mr. Ong said another target is to lessen check usage which still make up 92.5% of business-to-business transaction mostly due to tax-related reasons.

The latest study by Better than Cash Alliance showed that digital payments in the country comprised 10% of all transactions in 2018 from merely making up 1% of the total in 2013.

The value of e-payments also rose, from comprising only 8% of total transactions in 2013 to 20% in 2018.

BSP’s goal is to have 20% of the volume of transactions done digitally in 2020 and 30% of the value of payments done electronically. — Luz Wendy T. Noble

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