News

Philippines interbank network growing 15-20% per year

May 16, 2013

BancNet Inc., a Philippines-based interbank network, expects a 15–20 percent increase in transaction volume this year, in line with the electronic banking consortium's historical performance. While that's good news, the network, like those in the U.S., faces a looming shift to EMV.

BancNet EVP and CEO Aris P. Zafra Jr. told Business Mirror that the network is handling 1 million transactions daily, much of it switched transactions from the company's 109 member banks and 20 million ATM cardholders, whom the network has aggressively courted.

Zafra said that BancNet currently has a market share of 75 percent in terms of ATMs. That comes to about 9,750 of the country's 13,000 ATMs. The only Philippines banks not yet on the network, he said, were those in rural areas. 

The Philippines central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, is expected to soon mandate migration to EMV, along with much of the rest of Asia, with a target date of 2017, which coincides with the last of the migration deadlines for the U.S. market. 

Zafra told Business Mirror that EMV would likely be an effective risk-management solution for the country — but an expensive one. "We have yet to estimate how much the shift to EMV chip-embedded cards would cost," he said.

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