ACI Worldwide, a global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments software, and Security Bank Corp., a leading universal bank in the Philippines, have signed a contract to revolutionize the bank’s real-time payment hub.
Under the partnership, Security Bank will implement ACI’s cloud-native Enterprise Payments Platform solution, which will enable the bank to unify its payments platform and facilitate the interoperability of payment services and gateways for high and low-value payments such as InstaPay, Philippine Domestic Dollar Transfer Service System (PDDTS), PESONet, Swift, and PhilPaSSplus on ISO2022 standards.
The modernized payment hub empowers Security Bank to roll out innovative products and services to customers faster and add new payment types seamlessly and cost-effectively to its core infrastructure.
According to ACI Worldwide’s 2023 Prime-Time for Real-Time report, real-time payment transactions in the Philippines are expected to grow from 625 million in 2022 to 1.5 billion by 2027, representing a compound annual growth rate of 18.7 percent.
With paper-based transactions dominating 98.4 percent of payments volume and real-time payments only representing 0.7 percent share of payments volume in 2022, the market has yet to see its inflection point.
Under its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap (DPTR) 2020-2023, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) aims to convert 50 percent of total retail payments to electronic channels and increase the number of Filipino adults with bank accounts to 70 percent.
While there has been significant progress toward achieving these goals, there is still massive potential to reach the unbanked and underserved segments of the economy and unlock the benefits of real-time payments.
“The Philippines is among the fastest growing economies in ASEAN, clocking an impressive 7.6 percent GDP growth in 2022. Embracing digital real-time payments to foster financial inclusion and innovation, especially with the rise of a young, tech-savvy consumer base, is pivotal to the Philippines’ economic progress, said Leslie Choo, senior vice president, managing director – APAC, ACI Worldwide.
“Digital real-time payments are becoming ubiquitous, with today’s customers looking for a hyper-connected, frictionless customer experience. ACI’s modern, scalable, and cloud-native architecture will power real-time payments to meet the dynamic demands of our customers in the digital era. This initiative and our investment in innovative payment technology are testament to our unwavering commitment to customer-centricity,” said Stephen John Bell, SVP and Channels Network Group head at Security Bank.
