Realtime money transfers through InstaPay reached over 97 million transactions last December according to InstaPay operator BancNet. Its CEO Elmarie S. Reyes said that this record-breaking volume set a new milestone for the service as it grew by 13 million, or nearly 16%, from the previous month, and it was 41 million, or almost 73%, more than the volume in December 2022.
An all-time high single-day volume of 4.1 million money transfers was recorded on December 15, 2023, the payday before Christmas, beating by 2.9 million transactions, or 241.6%, the record of 1.2 million set on the same day in 2022.
InstaPay is an electronic fund transfer system that allows consumers and businesses to transfer small amounts of money between sender and receiver accounts in different banks and e-wallets instantly. It is accessible anytime through the mobile apps or websites of partner banks and e-wallets. The maximum amount that can be transferred is P50,000.00 per transaction. InstaPay was introduced by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in 2018 as a priority payment system under the National Retail Payment System (NRPS) with BancNet as its clearing switch operator. Four years later, the BSP designated InstaPay as a Prominently Important Payment System (PIPS), and authorized BancNet as an operator of a designated payment system (ODPS) which is InstaPay. A PIPS is placed under closer supervision and monitoring by the BSP to protect the public.
A total of 838.56 million InstaPay transactions with a total value of Php 5 trillion were processed in 2023, 56% and 45% respectively, higher than the figures the previous year. Despite the hefty volume, the robust InstaPay system, using world-class, cutting-edge technology, maintained a 99.89% controllable service availability rate during the year. For December alone, the controllable service availability rate of InstaPay was 100%.
During the last 5 years since its launch, InstaPay has accumulated more than 2.1 billion transactions worth Php 12.4 trillion, representing a compounded growth rate of 92% and 83%, respectively.
Reyes added, “We expect InstaPay to continue its upward growth trajectory this year as at least one new use case will be launched, and more participants will offer the existing use cases. New participants will also be onboarded this year, bringing in more end-users of InstaPay.” Last December, over 19 million unique customers sent money through InstaPay.
As of December 31, 2023, there were 86 InstaPay participants consisting of 65 banks and 21 e-wallet providers serving as either sender or receiver or both.
