THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) ordered banks to educate their employees on the ins and outs of real-time electronic retail payments system in the country.
In its first memorandum issued for the year, the Central Bank said all BSP-supervised financial institutions shall conduct a personnel education and publication of PesoNet and InstaPay information.
The PesoNet and InstaPay are the two automated clearing houses (ACH) launched under the National Retail Payments System (NRPS) agenda.
The Philippine EFT System and Operations Network (PesoNet) was the first ACH under the NRPS and was launched in November 2017. It is a batch electronic fund transfer (EFT) credit payment scheme, which can be considered an electronic alternative to the paper-based check system.
Fund transfers and payment instructions under PesoNet will be processed in bulk and cleared at batch intervals.
InstaPay, as launched in April 2017, is a real-time low-value EFT credit push payment scheme for transaction amounts up to P50,000. It is designed to facilitate small value payments.
Thus, the BSP ordered banks to establish “effective mechanisms” to ensure that all its frontline personnel possess adequate information about PesoNet and InstaPay so the staff can properly address customers’ concerns regarding the two facilities.
The memorandum also said banks are required to post materials containing pertinent information about PesoNet and InstaPay in the premises of its offices and on their web sites to enable their customers to have sufficient knowledge about the fund transfer facilities.
Also, banks should provide, with prominent visibility in their web site, the links to the PesoNet and InstaPay web sites that will be maintained or directed by the Philippine Payments Management Inc. (PPMI).
Local financial institutions shall meet these requirements not later than the end of the first quarter of 2019.