MANILA - The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will release the results of its investigation into the recent GCash issue most likely in the first half of December.

At the sideline of the Systemic Risk Dialogue in Cebu, BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan said they are still investigating the reported unauthorized deductions on account balances of some GCash users which occurred early this month. Tangonan said they hope to release probe results in 15 working days or about the second week of December.

“We want to be thorough in this. Because we want to assure the public that it's safe and that we are keeping it that way. So to instill that trust we have to tell the public, you know what happened, what we're going to do about it, and how do they protect themselves from it if it happens,” said Tangonan.

He added that based on initial information, the affected GCash users are a few in number and that based on the report of GCash to them, money has already been returned to affected customers.

Because of the incident, Tangonan said the central bank will review policies to strengthen the fintech sector.

“Usually, when you get to the bottom of things that will point you for any possible policy gaps. We have to plug those gaps. That's why we want to know what really was the root cause of this, so that we could review our policy. Sometimes we have the policy, but maybe we need to boost the enforcement," he said.

But will GCash be sanctioned if found to have shortcomings? GCash is a non-bank financial institution and is a BSP-supervised electronic money issuer.

“This is a hypothetical, of course, if there are infractions, noncompliance, of course, that's the course of action to take,” Tangonan said when asked about sanctions, but nothing specific was mentioned.

GCash earlier said it has completed wallet adjustments to affected users and assured that customer accounts are safe. The company added that it is committed to enhancing its systems and procedures to prevent similar incidents. It attributed the issue to errors in ongoing system reconciliation.