During its annual stockholders’ meeting recently, BancNet reported that it grew its network to 20,771 ATMs and 270,872 point-of-sale terminals as of yearend 2018. These figures represent growth rates of 3.83% and 10.47%, respectively, from 2017. According to BancNet CEO Aristeo Zafra, Jr., these machines served nearly 72.7 million ATM and other debit cards of BancNet members which likewise grew by 5.46%.
BancNet is a consortium of banks, cooperatives, non-bank electronic money issuers, and independent ATM deployers. In 2018, its member base expanded to 122 with the addition of Binangonan Rural Bank, CIMB Bank, and ATM deployers Euronet Technology Services and Novus Transact Philippines as new members.
As the clearing switch operator of real time payment and fund transfer system instaPay, BancNet processed more than 2.3 million transactions worth over PhP22.4 billion during the eight months following instaPay’s launch in April 2018. instaPay is a service that enables the instant transfer of funds in relatively small amounts from one participating bank or e-wallet to another. Currently, there are 41 participating banks and e-money issuers.
BancNet president Cezar P. Consing reported to the shareholders that last December, BancNet entered into a managed service arrangement with Mastercard for the use of the state-of-the-art real-time payment solution of Vocalink, a Mastercard subsidiary. He said, “We believe that BancNet’s Vocalink-supported platform will drive exponential growth in the use of instaPay and in the process, increase our consortium’s role in and contribution to the National Retail Payment System (NRPS).” NRPS is an initiative of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas that aims to accelerate digital payments in the country.
