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Roehl Niño Bautista · · 1 min readPhilippine central bank to put 3-year pause on digital bank applications
“The Philippine central bank will stop accepting applications for digital banking licenses from September 1, Governor Benjamin Diokno said. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will close the application window for three years to allow the regulator “to better monitor” the performance of the industry,” reported Bloomberg, citing a statement from the Philippine central bank
Details:
- The central bank will only accept applications until the end of August, with two out of the seven allotted digital banking licenses still up for grabs.
- BSP has granted licenses to Singapore-based Tonik Bank and UNObank, UnionBank, and Overseas Filipino Bank, which is owned by state lender Land Bank. GoTyme, a partnership between Gokongwei Group and South Africa-based TymeBank, has also received a digital banking license in the Philippines.
Dive deeper:
- Southeast Asia has seen a rise in digital banking, partly induced by Covid-19 restrictions that have forced business operations to go online. (Read: Why Indonesia’s tech giants find digital banks irresistible)
- The Philippines has an unbanked population of 63% as of 2020, according to Euromonitor. However, a report from International Data Corp expects a sizeable number of Filipinos to open digital bank accounts by 2025.
Editing by Collin Furtado
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