MANILA - The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Wednesday said it will launch 3 new e-payment streams with the Philippine Payments Management Inc to expand the digital payment ecosystem over the next 2 years.

The BSP and PPMI will introduce Bills Pay, Request to Pay and Direct Debit facilities, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said during a webinar hosted by Eastern Communications.

Here's what to expect:

BILLS PAY

This will improve existing but fragmented bills payment mechanisms for retail customers, the central bank said. With Bills Pay, retailer consumers will be able to pay electricity, water and telephone bills even if their accounts are different from the biller or other financial firms, it added.

REQUEST TO PAY

Payees will be able to collect payments by sending a "request to pay" without the need to provide account details or amount, the BSP said. The payor just need to authorize the collection by clicking "approve," it added.

DIRECT DEBIT

This facility will allow users to better manage recurring payments such as rentals, amortization and insurance, among others by authorizing billers to pull funds from their accounts, the BSP said.

These initiatives are in line with the BSP's Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap (DPTR), which aims to convert 50 percent of payments into digital and onboard 70 percent of the adult population into the formal banking system by 2023.

The BSP earlier introduced PESONet and InstaPay, under its National Retail Payment System.

Recently, it has approved a digital banking framework to encourage more digital financial services in the country as well as QR code standard to improve interoperability of the technology.

• BSP says 1 in 5 payments now digital; InstaPay overtakes ATM withdrawals in 2020
• Bangko Sentral unveils digital payments roadmap
• BSP on track to digitalize 50 percent of payments by 2023: Diokno

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