As a follow-up to its push last year to waive transaction fees for fund transfers under Php 1,000, the BSP reiterates this push once again to banks and other financial firms under its supervision–but became specific that the waived fees are only for personal transactions and payments to SMEs.
To formalize this, the BSP is collecting comments from stakeholders before it drafts a circular to waive the fees for select fund transfers. The BSP hopes to collect feedback by October 11 before it will have the circular approved by the Monetary Board. The BSP aims to implement the waiving of fees for select transactions by April 1, 2025. Aside from that, the moratorium for the fee hikes from InstaPay and PESONet will be lifted for Payment Service Providers (PSPs) once they submit their proof of compliance.
Under the current draft, the waived fees will be for personal transactions that are within the limit of BSP’s thresholds. BSP has yet to specify the maximum amount where fees will be waived but noted that digital fund transfers should not exceed 10 times a week. Should users exceed the number of transactions–or do transactions that are beyond the BSP’s threshold–they will have to pay for the service fees.
Aside from personal transactions, the BSP also proposes to waive fees to small businesses whose monthly aggregate gross receipts do not exceed Php 250,000.
In BSP’s latest data, 52.8% of transactions involved digital payments in 2023, which is higher than the 42.1% recorded in 2022.
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