News Archive

Last March 10-11, staff from the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS program went back to Batangas-based Bangko Kabayan to review its Mobile Phone Banking Channel Management pilot program. The team’s follow-up trip to Tingloy Island was to check on the developments of mobile phone banking activities there since the visit in December last year.

Prior to the review, the bank had already added a merchant-partner to support bank clients in another village. It has also tripled the number of depositors and doubled the number of borrowers using mobile phone banking services. These efforts greatly help in making mobile phone banking sustainable in a remote island setting as in Tingloy.

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In November 2010, 1st Valley Bank, a Northern Mindanao-based rural bank, launched a channel management initiative to support its mobile phone banking services with technical assistance from the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant to Mercy Corps and MICRA Philippines. The bank assigned three channel officers to promote the bank’s m-banking services for their branches located in Lanao del Norte, Zamboanga del Norte and Cagayan de Oro areas.

The bank is now focusing on alternative marketing strategies that combine financial education and product knowledge to enable users to register and utilize the bank’s m-banking services. In addition, the bank understood the need to integrate m-banking practices into its regular operations and microfinance activities to enable customers to be more active users of branchless banking options.

1st Valley Bank has strengthened its mobile banking strategy by allocating manpower and resources for the effort as well as improved senior management support and oversight.

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Delegates from Nepal Telecom, Nepal Rastra Bank, Kantipur Publications, KRS Solutions and Utiba visited the Philippines on February 14-15 to study the current mobile phone banking and mobile money services in the Philippines. The delegates were interested in how the rural banks, through the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program, have been implementing mobile phone banking and mobile money transfer services for their clients.

RBAP-MABS provided an orientation on the MABS program and its mobile phone banking initiative implemented by its participating rural banks in partnership with Globe’s G-XChange Inc. (GXI). MABS presented a video of Cantilan Bank’s experiences in offering m-banking services through GXI’s GCASH platform. MABS Chief of Party John Owens also shared how the idea of using mobile phone banking in the Philippines was conceptualized, the breakthroughs and milestones of offering these services, issues encountered, lessons learned, the business models practiced by the rural banks, and how to prepare financial institutions to promote mobile phone banking services for microentrepreneurs and low-income households.

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GM Bank is the largest rural bank in Nueva Ecija (Philippines) with its head office in Cabanatuan City, more than 3 hours by land north of Manila. It has been in partnership with Globe’s G-Xchange Inc. (GXI) and the RBAP-MABS program and for its mobile phone banking initiative since 2006. It is also one of the banks participating in the new Channel Management Initiative supported by USAID/Philippines and MICRA Philippines, which is supported by Mercy Corps through a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Channel Management Initiative focuses on developing partnerships between local merchant-partners who are accredited GCASH cash-in and cash-out outlets (CICOs). The rural banks provide liquidity services to the CICOs as well as send customers to their shops. The CICOs provide cash-in and cash-out services for the rural banks and help them in promoting mobile phone banking services.

Recently, GM Bank shared a new use case focused on students and schools to stimulate an m-banking ecosystem between the bank, its merchant-partners, students, and neighboring schools. The province, especially Cabanatuan City, is the educational center of the Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley regions.

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Turning sideways to squeeze between the tightly packed stalls, customers stop to admire strings of white, pink, and green pearls displayed by Jamera Macmac and her family. The family runs a pearl business in the bustling Greenhills Shopping Center in Manila, Philippines, where customers seek out their unique designs. After years of managing the business, Ms. Macmac wanted to look for new ways to sell her products. She also grew tired of frequent trips to the bank to deposit cash or send money to family in Mindanao.

The innovative solution was for Ms. Macmac’s customers to pay her using mobile money. This is possible due to the collaboration between Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (RBAP-MABS) Program, which is supported by USAID/Philippines, and Globe Telecom’s G-Xchange Inc. (GXI), which operates the GCASH platform. Utilizing the GCASH platform, RBAP-MABS participating rural bank, Philippine Rural Banking Corporation (PR Bank), introduced mobile banking and mobile commerce services to microenterprise clients in Greenhills Shopping Center. Ms. Macmac is now able to sell pearls to customers while accepting GCASH for payment. She can then use her mobile wallet to deposit money to her bank account remotely, pay bills, make purchases, and send money to relatives and friends via a network of rural banks that have been accredited with the support of the RBAP-MABS program to provide cash-in and cash-out services for GCASH clients.

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M-Banking allows rural banks to expand their reach to communities too small or too remote to justify a branch. Bangko Kabayan, working with the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program, has successfully piloted an approach that combines regular visits from bank officers with partnering with mobile money accredited merchants such as sari-sari stores, which provide cash-in, cash-out (CICO) services that allow bank clients to convert cash into mobile money or vice versa. This approach, called channel management, could be replicated by any rural bank that wishes to expand its customer reach to remote areas without the expense of building branches, thereby providing access to banking services cheaply and efficiently.

The RBAP-MABS Program Channel Management Initiative, with funding support from USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant from Mercy Corps, began its pilot phase in November 2010. In a recent visit in December 2010, RBAP-MABS interviewed the channel officers, merchant-partners, and clients of Bangko Kabayan. The team also visited one of the pilot areas located in Tingloy Island in Batangas Bay area, across Batangas City. This remote island can only be reached by a two-hour boat ride.In the interviews with merchants and clients in the area, RBAP-MABS found out that both were quite enthusiastic about the bank’s GCASH-powered mobile phone banking services (MPBS). They were particularly interested in the Text-A-Deposit service, which allows them to save remotely through their mobile phones. This is one more example of how small rural banks can provide banking services with mobile money platforms in remote areas even without a branch.


The RBAP-MABS Program Channel Management Initiative, with funding support from USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant from Mercy Corps, began its pilot phase in November 2010. In a recent visit in December 2010, RBAP-MABS interviewed the channel officers, merchant-partners, and clients of Bangko Kabayan. The team also visited one of the pilot areas located in Tingloy Island in Batangas Bay area, across Batangas City. This remote island can only be reached by a two-hour boat ride.

In the interviews with merchants and clients in the area, RBAP-MABS found out that both were quite enthusiastic about the bank’s GCASH-powered mobile phone banking services (MPBS). They were particularly interested in the Text-A-Deposit service, which allows them to save remotely through their mobile phones. This is one more example of how small rural banks can provide banking services with mobile money platforms in remote areas even without a branch.

Bangko Kabayan hired two channel officers to separately conduct market research and identify potential merchant-partners who can be accredited by the mobile money issuer and act as cash-in and cash-out points. One of the channel officers visited Tingloy Island and surveyed key barangays.

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Since the inception of the rural banks’ mobile phone banking initiative with the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS program, mobile phone banking has continued to rise and expand in the Philippines, particularly among the unbanked and underbanked in the countryside. Thus, the Philippines became one of the world’s leaders in small microfinance-oriented rural banks utilizing mobile money platforms to facilitate access to banking services. Practitioners from all over the world now regularly visit to learn from the rural banks’ experiences.

On February 28-March 1, twelve (12) representatives from Infotel in India, the Grace Kennedy Group and Digicel in Jamaica, Digicel Haiti, Meezan Bank in Pakistan and Utiba Americas visited the Philippines to take a closer look at its mobile phone banking industry, particularly the rural banks’ role in providing these services. They first visited the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) and listened to an orientation on its Mobile Phone Banking initiative from the RBAP-MABS team.

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Having pioneered mobile phone banking and being noted as one of the world’s leaders in mobile money, the Philippines hosted the Mobile Money Transfer Asia Pacific Conference (MMT-APAC) on January 17-20 at the Hyatt Hotel and Casino in Manila. This is the second of Clarion Events’ MMT-APAC series, which started in December 2009.

Gathering the world’s mobile money industry leaders, mobile network operators, financial institutions, regulators and m-commerce practitioners, the conference featured presentations on the latest trends, updates and developments in mobile money from all over the world. Highlighted during the event were the mobile phone banking and mobile money transfer experiences of the Philippine rural banks presented by Bangko Kabayan’s Ms. Fides Ganzon, Cantilan Bank’s Gen. Charles Hotchkiss (Ret.), and RBAP-MABS Chief of Party John Owens.

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Bank of Florida together with G-XChange Inc. (GXI), the wholly-owned mobile commerce subsidiary of Globe Telecom, brings the benefits of mobile banking services to communities in Central Luzon.

Working closely with the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) and Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS), a program supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Bank of Florida allows customers to experience convenience in getting remittances through mobile phone banking.

To date, Bank of Florida has a total of P1.3B assets. Together with RBAP and MABS, GXI is proud to partner with Bank of Florida in continuously uplifting the unbanked and underbanked communities it serves.

Together with its selected partner rural banks and the Microfinance Innovation Center for Resources and Alternatives (MICRA) Philippines, the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program began the pilot phase of its Mobile Phone Banking Channel Management Project on November 15, 2010.The team visited two of its four pilot banks for the project – Bangko Kabayan and Cantilan Bank – in December to check out how the project is going.

On December 9 and 10, RBAP-MABS visited and interviewed the channel officers, merchant-partners, and clients of Batangas-based Bangko Kabayan. The team visited the pilot area located in Tingloy Island, Batangas Bay (across Batangas City), which can only be reached by a two-hour boat ride. The merchant and clients interviewed were enthusiastic in supporting the bank’s initiative, especially on the prospect of being able to avail of the bank’s mobile phone banking services via GCash. RBAP-MABS assisted the bank in fine-tuning its marketing plan to better serve the clients in the area. The program will continue to monitor the area’s progress as the pilot rolls out in April 2011. Read more

The USAID – supported RBAP-MABS program, in partnership with G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom,conducted a mobile phone banking accreditation seminarfor Mindanao rural banks at the Grand Men Seng Hotel, Davao City on December 14.

Twenty-two (22) participants from 11 rural banks interested in offering mobile phone banking services attended the seminar. Eight banks were introduced to the initiative: Cooperative Rural Bank of Davao Del Sur, Penbank Central, Rural Bank of Talisayan, Rural Bank of Manolo Fortich, Rural Bank of Cabadbaran, Rural Bank of Lanuza, Partner Rural Bank (Cotabato), Inc. and Rural Bank of Kibawe. Three banks, on the other hand, attended the seminar as a refresher course: Century Bank, Rural Bank of Labason and Rural Bank of Saranggani. The training was intended to prepare rural banks for Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) authorization to offer mobile phone banking services.

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Philippine Information Agency – Balabac, Palawan (1 December) — Conditional cash transfers (CCT) for the 4Ps beneficiaries is now made more accessible, easier, and hassle-free with the new innovative solution utilizing the GCash, rural banks and other money remittances channels.

Land Bank used to distribute these cash grants, which are meant to provide for the education and health needs of the children and pregnant mother in a poor family, in exchange for their compliance to a list of program conditionalities.

However, the beneficiaries in the remote villages are burdened by the transportation costs in claiming their monthly CCTs in the Land Bank. There are only 3 branches of the bank in Palawan and these are located in the poblacion areas.

Innovative Solutions

GCash Remit is one of the solutions to address this problem. With this new cash release scheme, beneficiaries are saved from spending on fares, some of which are even bigger than the cash grants that they are set to receive.

“Secretary (Dinky) Soliman really wants to bring the money closer to the people,” says Director Honorita Bayudan, the new National Program Manager of 4Ps, during the evaluation meeting for the pilot GCash Remit. Bringing the money closer to the people means utilizing “merchants in the market” who can do the job, even if it will entail additional administrative cost for the Department.

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The USAID-supported RBAP-MABS program conducted a mobile phone banking accreditation seminar at Legend Villas, Mandaluyong City on November 22. Held in partnership with G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom, the training was attended by 22 participants from 10 Luzon-based banks, namely: Country Rural Bank of Taguig, Builders Rural Bank, Rural Bank of Pilar (Bataan), Rural Bank of Cabuyao, Rural Bank of Paete, Rural Bank of Taal, Community Bank (RB Alfonso), First Macro Bank, Rural Bank of Agoo, and Sampaguita Savings Bank.

The participants were trained on GXI’s GCASH platform and mobile phone banking fundamentals, including step-by-step procedures and service implementation. Simulations and hands-on-exercises were done to build on the skills of the participants. Each went home with new knowledge, skills and CD manuals to help them in the implementation of Mobile Phone Banking Services using the GCASH platform. Read more

Representatives from the Banking Supervision Department of the Central Bank of Namibia in South Africa visited the country on November 15-19 to study Philippine microfinance under the Knowledge Exchange Program of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). The group, headed by Department Director Romeo Nel, was eager to learn the mobile phone banking experience of the country, as well as the regulatory policies of the BSP. Also in the study group were Mr. Brian Gei-Khoibeb, Deputy Director for Payment System, and Mr. Sergio de Sousa, Payment System Analyst.

On November 18, the group visited First Macro Bank’s main office in Pateros City, as well as its other banking office (OBO) in Antipolo City. They observed the bank’s operations, visited its clients, and studied its lending procedures and mobile phone banking operations. They also witnessed how the clients paid their loan amortization using mobile phone banking through the GCASH platform. Read more>>

The USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program and the Microfinance Innovation Center for Resources and Alternatives (MICRA) Philippines held the first part of their series of mobile phone banking channel management trainings on October 13-15 for Luzon banks, and on October 20-22 for Mindanao banks. Eighteen (18) bank officers from five MABS participating banks attended the training, which was to prepare them for the pilot test of the RBAP-MABS Channel Management Project through the GCASH platform.

A component of the RBAP-MABS mobile phone banking initiative, the Channel Management Project aims to develop merchant-partners that can market and provide cash-in/cash-out services to clients in behalf of their respective partner banks. This strategy provides rural banks an opportunity to increase the volume and value of mobile phone banking transactions and cross-sell other bank products and services.

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BY JIMMY CALAPATI
"THE Philippines is among the most advanced mobile money markets in the world"

This was the statement of the GSM Association (GSMA), an association of 800 mobile operators and more than 200 related companies all over the world, in its 2010 annual report entitled "The Mobile Money for the Unbanked Programme".

In the report, GSMA said that three factors have contributed to the success of mobile money in the Philippines: the characteristics of the Philippines market; actions taken by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP); and, actions taken by the country’s top telecommunications company--Smart and Globe.

"Not only the extent, but also the way in which Filipinos have adopted mobile have been key enablers of mobile money success. The country is the texting capital of the world and Filipino mobile users are highly SMS literate, which made the proposition of conducting financial transactions on a handset somewhat more intuitive," GSMA said.

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Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) Awards, the world’s first mobile money awards, recently announced the finalists for this year’s awarding ceremonies. Among them were Globe’s GCASH and its partnership with the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) in providing mobile phone banking services to thousands of low income households in the Philippines.

Four finalists for each of the MMT Award’s six categories were chosen from several entries from all over the world. The GCASH-RBAP partnership was shortlisted for the “Achievement in Financial Inclusion” category, which recognizes an MMT service provider (operator, bank or microfinance institution) that has made a real difference to the unbanked in its country of operation, bringing about tangible social and economic improvement. Among the other finalists in this category were Safaricom - M-PESA, EKO Financial Services, and the EasyPaisa – Telenor & Tameer Bank partnership. GCASH was also named as finalist for the “Best IMT Programme” category. The other categories were "Best MMT Entrant of the Year”, “Best Bank-led MMT Project”, “Best Operator-led MMT Project”, and “Most Inventive Marketing Campaign”.

The awarding will be held during the upcoming MMT Global Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on October 24-27. It will be another big gathering of MMT practitioners from all over the world, like the Asia-Pacific Conference held in Manila last December and the MMT Summit held in Dubai in October last year.

A study group of six bankers from India, Nepal and Thailand visited the Philippines on October 11-18 to learn about mobile phone banking in the country. The delegation was composed of Mr. Kudero S. Mahadevaswamy of the Reserve Bank of India, Mr. Madhav Prasad Ghimire and Mr. Khagendra Prasad Gautam of Nepal Rastra Bank, Mrs. Doungratana Satthavorasit of Bank of Thailand, and Mrs. Puntip Pitakwasad and Mrs. Kajiphan Mcentire of the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (Thailand).

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Rural banks further empower their mobile phone banking clients with a new and exciting ATM Card attached to the GCash wallet, the Rural Bank FaceCard ATM Card. Made possible with the joint support of RBAP, its USAID-supported MABS program, and Globe’s G-Xchange Inc. (GXI), the customizable Rural Bank FaceCard ATM Card allows mobile phone banking clients to withdraw money not just from Globe’s over 18,000 cash-in/cash-out (CICO) outlets, but also from more than 9,000 ATMs or automated teller machines nationwide. It also doubles as a valid ID card containing the client’s photo and signature. Powered by GXI, this new ATM card allows clients to choose among pre-designed themes or upload an image of their own design.

Early this year, Globe launched a major expansion of its GCash Cash-In and Cash-Out (CICO) network. Adding all ATMs nationwide, clients now gain access to over 27,000 GCash cash-out points. “We have always worked with the rural banks to utilize the power of GCASH to deliver various services for remote payments or money transfer purposes, attuned to the needs of the under-banked customer segments they serve. In-line with the significant growth of the rural banking industry over the past five years, we have now designed a dual function card providing ATM access that also serves as a valid ID appropriate for their customers based in key cities. This is our way of strengthening the link between the under-banked and banked markets serviced by our rural bank partners with the expanded capabilities of our GCash platform,” GXI President Rizza Maniego-Eala said.

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Bangko Mabuhay together with G-Xchange Inc. (GXI), a wholly-owned mobile commerce subsidiary of Globe Telecom, brings the benefits of mobile money and convenient remittance pay-out options in Cavite.

Using the GCASH platform, its branches serve as cash-in and cash-out facilities for customers who would like to take advantage of the convenience that mobile money transfer offers. Bangko Mabuhay is also an active pay-out outlet for GCASH REMIT, cash pick-up remittance service under GXI.

Bangko Mabuhay, registered as Rural Bank of Tanza (Cavite), Inc., has over P900M in assets serving thousands of clients in the province.

See full section printed on Philippine Star on August 27, 2010.