The House Committee on Banks and Financial Intermediaries created on Friday, Dec. 11, a technical working group that will fine-tune bills promoting the use of digital money.
The bills to be consolidated are House Bill 6646 which creates a Bangko Sentral Digital Peso (BSDP) as a medium of exchange or as money for use on all digital and means; and HBs 6652, 6716, and 7130, which all seek to promote the adoption of electronic money as a medium of exchange for financial transactions of the government and all merchants.
“Switching to digital and cashless payments brings convenience, ensures transparency and safety, saves time, and offers speedy value transfers,” said Bataan second district representative Jose Enrique “Joet” Garcia III in the explanatory note of his HB 6652.
During the meeting, Garcia said among the amendments to the proposed measures is changing the term “electronic money” to “digital payments” to accommodate more types of digital transactions.
The bills were also amended to adopt the definition of “payment systems” under Republic Act 11127 to refer to “monetary transaction between two parties through a digital instrument between two parties and the payee using an electronic medium.”
