Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 27) — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) eyes eliminating fees on small-value fund transfers to promote the use of cashless payments.
BSP Governor Felipe Medalla said the central bank is ready to work with banks and payment system operators to study a “cost-sharing system” that will remove fees from small transactions.
“If the fee is ₱15 for a ₱200 transaction, then the fee is quite large relative to the amount being sent,” he wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
Medalla said the central bank may also consider slashing the reserve requirement to enable banks to make these concessions.
The reserve requirement ratio (RRR), which is currently at 12% for big banks, is the percentage of deposits that financial institutions must keep on hand. It is essentially a tax on banks, as they could not make a profit out of these funds.
The BSP earlier said its goal is to cut the RRR to single-digit by this year.
“All these, in pursuit of a financial system that leaves no one behind,” Medalla also said on Twitter. “After all, the true measure of an effective policy lies not in its complexity but in its ability to bring those at the margins into the fold.”
