BancNet, the country’s largest electronic banking consortium, reported to its stockholders recently a 10.3% expansion in its ATM network and 8.01 % in its payment terminals at point of sale (P.O.S.) last year. At the end of 2014, there were 13,067 ATMs and 47,513 payment terminals in its nationwide network. The BancNet ATMs comprise 79.53%, or 4 out of 5, of all ATMs in the country.
The consortium’s ATM cardholder base also expanded to 44.16 million, from 35.53 million the year before, growing by 8.63 million new cardholders, or 19.54%. Five banks and a cooperative joined BancNet in 2014, bringing the total number of members to 113 at yearend. The new members are United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), Katipunan Bank in Dipolog City, Tiaong Rural Bank in Quezon, Rural Bank of Gattaran in Cagayan, Rural Bank of Hindang in Leyte, and Suyo Multi-Purpose Cooperative in Ilocos Sur.
According to BancNet chairman Manuel C. Tagaza, BancNet processed an all-time-high total of 498.25 million switched transactions during the year, up 10.75% from almost 450 million in 2013. This is equivalent to an average of around 1.36 million transactions a day. The volume peaked on December 23, 2014, the last working day before Christmas, when 3.78 million switched transactions were recorded. “This is about a million transactions more than the 2.76 million recorded on December 20, 2013, the highest for that year, and set a new record,” said Tagaza.
He added that BancNet was able to maintain an average host availability rate of 99.52% and an average transaction completion rate of 97.98% during the year despite the increasingly heavy volume. “Our switch, which we upgraded the year before, was ready for it. In fact, this switch is capable of handling even bigger volumes in the future,” Tagaza shared.
Another global standard is the EMV chip technology for secure payment transactions. “We came up with an EMV migration program to implement the technology by January 1, 2017, the deadline set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). We signed a memorandum of agreement with VISA that allows BancNet access to VISA’s EMV implementation standards in order to accelerate our migration to EMV chip cards,” reported Tagaza. EMV chip cards contain an embedded microprocessor which creates a new transaction code every time the card is used. “This anti-counterfeit fraud measure was not possible with traditional magnetic stripe cards,” he clarified.
“Also during the year, we evaluated two-factor authentication systems for our payment gateway BancNet Online to be implemented this year, subscribed to a FraudWatch International solution to protect BancNet Online users from phishing and pharming, subjected the website to periodic external Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Tests which it passed with flying colors, and launched another security feature on the website’s transactional pages called Secure Socket Layer (SSL), a certification from Verisign that BancNet Online is a legitimate, secure, and trusted site.”
Tagaza also told the stockholders that BancNet will continue to invest “in the newest technology and the latest applications to ensure a secure and reliable network that can cope with the expected growth in transactions spawned by a buoyant economy. “
“Moreover, we will pursue efforts toward greater interoperability with other payment networks in support of the BSP’s goal to establish a national retail payment system (NRPS). The NRPS aims for integration, transaction efficiency and financial inclusiveness in the way people pay and settle commercial and financial transactions through expanded usage of electronic forms of payment,” Tagaza added.
