Ms. Roxana Baldetti of the Guatemalan Congress visits RBAP for mobile phone banking

June 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guatemala visit 1

A well-known member of the Congress of Guatemala, Ms. Roxana Baldetti, visited the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) on June 17, 2011 to better understand how the mobile phone banking initiative through the rural banks has worked out in the Philippines, particularly in reaching out to more remote areas..

Guatemala is a country with a population of about 13.8 million – over 75 percent of which live below the poverty line. Poverty is even more severe among the rural and indigenous populations. (Source: Encyclopedia of the Nations)

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Filed Under: Latest Updates, MABS Highlights Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rural banks expand mobile phone banking in the countryside

April 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Manila Times – A partnership between telecom firms and rural banks in providing financial services to more Filipinos is expected to reach new heights with the development of newer technologies and acceptance of mobile banking in the countryside becoming more prevalent.

Many expect mobile money transfers (MMT) to boom over the next three years as the cost and ability to send money and pay for basic goods and services are cheaper and more efficient than the traditional modes. Globe Telecom subsidiary G-Xchange and the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) are now working together to expand mobile banking services and provide a wider array of financial services. RBAP is also working with Smart Communications to enable MMT via the Smart Money platform and eventually mobile phone banking services for Smart subscribers as well.

While MMT is a very useful service for remittances and payments, the real potential comes from combining these platforms with a bank to offer real mobile phone banking services that make it easier for people to save, borrow, repay their loans, pay bills, facilitate rural payroll, or send or receive remittances. With more than 2,700 branches and other banking offices and more than five million clients, the rural banks are in the best position to provide the largest bank network partnership in the countryside.

With the service, cell phone owners can remit and donate money, receive and make loan payments, pay salaries, commissions and bills through a text message. It is now estimated that there are more than 70 million individual mobile phone subscribers in the Philippines and more than half of them do not have bank accounts. This is the large untapped market that rural banks are now focusing on in partnership with GXI and, in the near future, with Smart.

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Providing M-Banking Services in a Remote Island: The Bangko Kabayan Experience

February 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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.

Batangas map

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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RBAP-MABS & Rural Banks highlighted at the MMT Asia-Pacific Conference 2011

January 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

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.

Panel on the mobile phone banking initiative of RBAP-MABS and the rural banks

Panel on the mobile phone banking initiative of RBAP-MABS and the rural banks

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.

While mobile phone banking remains a successful and steadily growing industry in the country, there still are a lot of things that can be done in order to further strengthen, improve and expand this service. Mr. Hotchkiss noted that mobile issuers and banks utilizing these platforms to promote access to banking services have to work hard in order to achieve critical mass in building a mobile money ecosystem.
Ms. Ganzon shared that the best strat egy for offering mobile money is to ensure that the bank’s own staff are the first to use the service via mobile money payroll. Not only does this create an initial sure clientele, it also allows the bank staff to become familiar with the features of the mobile phone banking services, thus making it easier for them to explain the technology and encourage bank clients to use the service as well. Cantilan Bank was among the pilot banks of the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS’ mobile phone banking initiative which started in 2005-2006. Both Cantilan Bank and Bangko Kabayan learned the lesson early on about ensuring employees understand the system by offering the Text-a-Sweldo service (sending salaries to employees’ mobile wallets via GCASH). The banks also offered this service to other companies in their respective markets. According to Ms. Ganzon, mobile money offered their bank a great way to meet rural payroll demands of their larger bank clients. She also said that the ideal market for mobile money payroll are companies with employees who are scattered or based in rural areas. However, she stressed that promoting this payroll system to clients requires banks to ensure that there is an adequate cash-out network in place.

While mobile phone banking remains a successful and steadily growing industry in the country, there still are a lot of things that can be done in order to further strengthen, improve and expand this service. Mr. Hotchkiss noted that mobile issuers and banks utilizing these platforms to promote access to banking services have to work hard in order to achieve critical mass in building a mobile money ecosystem. [Read more...]

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Bank of Florida and GCASH offer mobile banking services to Central Luzon

January 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Bank of Florida and GCASH

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.

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.

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