Catching the Technology Wave: Mobile Phone Banking and Text-a-Payment in the Philippines
In April 2006, I got an email from Anna Bantug-Herrera of Chemonics inviting me for an interview about m-Commerce in the Philippines. She was here representing her company, Chemonics (chemonics.com) and was investigating a payment system setup in Mindanao that makes use of G-Cash for microfinance.
Anna’s visit to the Philippines resulted in a paper entitled “Catching the Technology Wave: Mobile Phone Banking and Text-a-Payment in the Philippines”.
Anna gives a quick review of Text-A-Payment, a microfinance payment scheme by the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines. Excerpts …
Potential Impact of Mobile Phone Banking
The potential impact of mobile phone banking is impressive. There are numerous applications available which are both valuable for the client as well the bank, including remittances – both domestic and international, deposits, withdrawals, bill payment, cash in/out, and TAP. Remittances, both domestic and international, offer a large market given the large volume in the Philippines and relative low cost of using SMS-based mobile phone banking applications as compared to the high cost of current banking and remittance company alternatives.
It proposes further the question of whether the Text-A-Payment system can be replicated in other countries.
There are certain success factors in this Philippine example– a large number of cell phone users including low income households who are familiar with text messaging, a strong relationship between “champions” at Globe and RBAP-MABS, the willingness of Globe and the rural banks to try something new and innovate, the existence of the “ecosystem” of merchants, clients and outlets, and most importantly, the willingness of the Central Bank to support innovation in the banking industry.
There are many untold stories, some good, some not so good. But papers like this help make sense of what’s out there, of what can be done.
Read the paper here: Catching the Technology Wave: Mobile Phone Banking and Text-a-Payment in the Philippines (PDF, 250kb)
ka edong
m-konomist
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Salamat! :-) - Ka Edong, 15 October 2008
hey edong!
very interesting site.
just want to share that i was previously involved in similar Text-A-Payment (TAP) projects also using G-Cash as the enabler. Aside from the implementations mentioned
we were able to roll out tax payment for a few tax types in coordination with Globe and BIR. A number of proposed TAP schemes were also in our pipeline all involving govt agencies like Philhealth, SEC, PRC and others. this technology has a lot of potential. andd i think Globe needs to do more to market this product.
keep it up!
For those interested in the MABS-designed mobile commerce and the mobile phone banking applications that utilize the G-Cash platform, please see the video posted on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz4HFSNgvuw
I was involved in a similar mbanking project which uses the mobile banking solution from Vipera:
http://www.viperanetworks.com/content/view/48/107
There we developed ideas on how to bring a more user friendly and secure wallet onto mass market phones.
Silvano
Hi
I did hear about mobile phone banking before but was never sure of how good it works. I was always skeptical about some potential error. Thanks for the info.