The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) recently announced that its retail digital transactions — which include money transfers to other BPI accounts, interbank transfers, transactions with e-commerce partners, bills payments — soared by more than 25 percent in just two weeks since the start of the enhanced community quarantine, which the government enforced to help contain the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak.
BPI chief digital officer Noel Santiago said for money transfers within BPI and BPI Family accounts, the numbers reached almost a million transactions. Interbank transactions via InstaPay reached close to 300,000, 50% more than pre-quarantine levels. In the last two weeks of March, BPI, through its retail digital platforms, facilitated more than 1.5 million transactions with a total value of close to P8 billion.
Furthermore, for those still requiring cash, the large BPI ATM network with its convenient locations processed 4.5 million ATM transactions, including 1 million of which was other bank’s customers. This brings about P21 billion in transaction amount for the period of March 16 to March 31.
“The transaction statistics have confirmed that digital banking is no longer just an option, but a mainstream financial service,” said Santiago. “People are realizing they can do financial transactions from the comfort of their homes. Our foresight and investments in digitalization prepared us to be ready in times like this.”
Santiago reiterated that digital banking together with the branch network are perfect complementary channels to serve the needs of our clients.
As one of the leaders in digital banking in the country, BPI sees a continual increase in digital banking adoption. In just one month, BPI recorded close to 100,000 customers sign-ups for their online and mobile banking platforms, bringing the total retail digital customer base to almost 4 million.
The introduction of the Mobile Key, an additional security feature that is linked to a specific device, and uses either biometrics or a special code known only to the client, has shown positive adoption with about 300,000 activations within the first month of the launch last March 6, 2020.
“Necessity is driving the rapid adoption of digital. People are now seeing the value of going digital, and BPI is encouraging them to take advantage of the security and convenience of digital banking, which will be the new normal, post-Covid-19,” said Santiago.