MANILA - The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Tuesday it is confident it can achieve its digitalization goals ahead of 2023.

Under its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap (DPTR), the BSP aims to digitize at least 50 percent of retail payments volume and encourage 70 percent of Filipino adults to open bank accounts by 2023.

“We are confident of hitting the twin goals...With financial digitalization, I am confident that we will achieve the stronger post-COVID economy that we envision sooner rather than later,” said BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno said during the recently concluded HSBC Digital Bankers Forum.

“As more Filipinos embrace the convenience of digital payments, we expect the phenomenal growth in digital financial transactions to continue in the years ahead,” he added.

Share of digital payments to the total financial transactions reached 20.1 percent in 2020 from 14 percent in 2019, the central bank said.

Registered e-money accounts hit 138.8 million in 2020 with the total number of transactions at 1.7 billion, data show.

The number of basic deposit accounts reached 7 million with P4.8 billion deposits in the first quarter of 2021, which brought the total number of banked Filipino adults to 53 percent in the period, the BSP said.

As of October this year, at least 1 in 5 payments was already digital, a BSP report said.

Both InstaPay and PESONet transactions, or the electronic money transfers under the BSP's National Retail Payment System, have surged in both volumes and values during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• BSP says 1 in 5 payments now digital; InstaPay overtakes ATM withdrawals in 2020
• Bangko Sentral eyes digital payments sans internet connection
• BSP creates unit for physical money, digital payments ecosystem

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