March 2022

BUx, the Philippines’ largest all-in-one payment solutions platform, is ramping up client acquisition efforts this year to help the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) meet its aim of shifting 50% of all transactions to digital channels by 2023.

BUx believes that as consumer behavior evolves and their demand for digital solutions grows, more micro, small, and medium companies (MSMEs) and major organizations will use digital payment solutions this year.

“We are intensifying our customer acquisition efforts to equip more businesses — from large corporations to micro entrepreneurs — with digital payment solutions that help streamline their businesses and enable them to provide better customer experience. We are committed to further reach more businesses, including marketplace aggregators, to support the BSP in attaining its goal of converting 50 percent of total transactions to digital channels by 2023,” UBx Managing Director for Commerce and Payments Jaime P. Garchitorena said.

Latest BSP data showed that the share of digital payments to the total volume of transactions in 2020 reached 20.1 percent from 14 percent in 2019, and a huge leap from only 1 percent in 2013.

Driving this growth is the 47.8-percent rise in payments to merchants, as well as peer-to-peer transactions, and government disbursements.

“With one in five Filipinos now transacting digitally, we are seeing a change in consumer behavior. Filipinos are now embracing digital payments and merchants are able to match  that demand by adopting digital payment solutions,” Garchitorena said.

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital payments in 2020 due to the limited mobility brought about by the community quarantines.

BUx alone recorded a 33x surge in transaction volume in 2021, processing gross transaction value in the billions of pesos.

An end-to-end payment solutions platform, BUx allows merchants of all sizes to accept all forms of payment. It unifies payment channels from card payments, bank transfers, over-the-counter payments, to e-wallets into one solution.

BUx has the most extensive payments network in the Philippines with over 50,000 access points and over 30 payment partner channels, effectively covering all of the payment channels required by merchants.

BUx’s best-in-class dashboard not only allows customers to track paid and pending payments, download payment summaries, and receive real-time notifications of funds credited, but it also allows businesses to track paid and pending payments, download payment summaries, and receive real-time notifications of funds credited.

“We remain steadfast in pursuing digital innovation and expanding our suite of digital payment services to serve the evolving needs of both consumers and merchants. We believe that as the leading all-in-one payment solutions platform in the Philippines, our growth equates to helping the government achieve its goals under the National Retail Payment System Framework,” Garchitorena said.

Visit www.bux.ph for more information on Bux and about the company

About UBX

UBX is the financial technology venture studio and fund of UnionBank of the Philippines. UBX is predicated on a future where financial services are invisible: seamlessly embedded into the experiences and activities that truly matter to businesses and people. For partnerships, email us at [email protected].

Residents from Foreshore, Tondo Manila can now utilize a fully equipped Super Health Center from SM

When it comes to economic growth in the Philippines, the private sector plays a key role by creating more jobs and contributing to our gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, as more businesses implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts to address social and environmental concerns in the communities where they operate, it is seen as a driving factor for inclusive and sustainable growth in the country.

Business can thrive by assisting in the improvement of the people’s quality of life in these host communities. As a result, CSR has evolved into a critical pillar of successful business management over time. Henry “Tatang” Sy, Sr., SM’s visionary founder, put it best in his premise that social improvement and investment go hand in hand.

Staying true to its commitment, SMFI is one of the first responders after the onslaught of Typhoon Odette

The SM group has embraced the responsibility to contribute to nation building through its social good arm, the SM Foundation, Inc. (SMFI). For nearly four decades, we have focused our resources, time, and reach to ensure that we are able to create opportunities wherever SM is present through social good programs that are geared towards quality education, sustainable agriculture, healthcare, and disaster response.

SM Scholars General Assembly (File Photo)

Anchored on Tatang’s belief that education is the greatest equalizer, SMFI established the SM Scholarship Program in 1993 to provide the youth access to quality tertiary and vocational education. We believe that through our scholarship grants, SM will be able to contribute to eradicating the intergenerational poverty cycle by granting scholarships to economically challenged but deserving students. And to complement this and more importantly, to address the challenges being faced by our public school system, SMFI, together with social good partners such as SM Prime, we have provided school buildings equipped with key facilities and equipment to underserved communities.

SM KSK Urban Farmers from Pasay City

Another social good pillar of SMFI is sustainable agriculture that aims to address the dilemma of the aging farmer population in the country as well as the growing gap between supply and demand for local food sources. In 2007, the foundation launched the Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan (KSK) program to bring modern and sustainable farming skills and linkages in both rural and urban communities, empowering farmers to have food on their table and creating market linkage to provide them with economic opportunities.

Accessible healthcare and timely disaster response are also at the heart of the foundation’s advocacy. Through its Health and Wellness program, SMFI helps address the shortage of quality healthcare facilities in the country by constructing and upgrading health centers in host communities supplemented by medical mission activities nationwide. The Operation Tulong Express (OPTE), on the other hand, gives immediate assistance in the form of relief goods and medical services in collaboration with SM Supermalls and SM Markets to communities affected by calamities and disasters that frequently occur in the country.

SMFI donated PPEs and much-needed medical equipment to various hospitals nationwide to help fight the spread of COVID-19

During the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, SMFI was one of the first organizations to assume an active role in assisting in the pandemic response by expanding the reach and impact of the Health and Wellness program and utilizing its partnerships to extend a helping hand to frontliners and Filipinos nationwide, especially those in SM host communities.

Through these social good programs, we continuously aspire to be a development partner for our host communities and serve as model for other organizations in terms of bringing social development specially in areas where they operate.

Implementing CSR involves a dynamic learning process given that social and environmental good are moving targets – and these cannot be fully achieved through one-time activities and decisions. Instead, companies should view and approach CSR as a process of continuous improvement that involves being constantly alert to new issues and considerations, which can be achieved through consistent community consultation and engagement.

Aside from free medical consultations and medicines, SM also provides free diagnostics and laboratory services to stakeholders specially in grassroot communities

Contrary to popular belief, CSR is not limited to major organizations and multinational corporations; small and medium-sized businesses can also assist their communities in their own unique ways. In fact, because they are more thoroughly rooted in their communities, they are more likely to effectively facilitate local-level CSR activities. Source raw materials from community-based suppliers, match and encourage charitable activities by employees, and even become paperless in their regular corporate operations are examples of these.

CSR initiatives, regardless of size or scope, are essential to the communities they serve because they play a critical role in encouraging sustainable, just, and balanced development, as well as contributing to the resolution of social and environmental issues.

According to a ranking official of UBX, the Philippines’ leading open finance platform, open finance has the potential to accelerate the country’s financial inclusion goal by democratizing access to a spectrum of financial products and services, particularly for the unbanked and underbanked, as well as growing businesses.

Open finance facilitates access and interoperability across financial ecosystem members, allowing financial institutions to reach out to the unbanked and underbanked while also empowering them to customize solutions to match the needs of consumers and companies.

“Inclusion has always been a critical mission for us at UBX, and we believe that the accelerated adoption of the open finance framework will allow us and the industry to hasten our shared goal of including everyone in the financial system. Open finance will enable our partners to acquire customers at scale, develop solutions specific to the unbanked, underbanked, and growing businesses, and provide consumers with greater choice and control over their data,” UBX President John Januszczak said.

The Bangko Sentral ng Plilipinas (BSP) recently rolled out the Open Finance Framework, which allows “consent-driven data portability, interoperability, and collaborative partnerships among financial institutions and third-party providers (TPPs).”

Last month, the BSP also unveiled the refreshed 2022-2028 National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI), which aims to reduce disparities in financial inclusion; improving health and resilience; empowering consumers; and increasing access to finance of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) including startups and the agriculture sector.

“Since we were formed in 2018, we at UBX have been consistent with our drive to include everyone into the financial ecosystem. We have invested heavily in open finance technologies and tools that complement the BSP’s regulations and initiatives towards financial inclusion,” Januszczak said.

Through its banking-as-as-service venture i2i, UBX enables ordinary merchants to become banking agents, who can offer a range of banking solutions from performing know-your-customer (KYC) processes, disbursing funds, processing bills payments, accepting deposits, accepting and forwarding loan applications, to selling insurance, among many others.

A cloud-based platform, i2i is built on blockchain and open finance technologies, enabling fast, reliable, and secure financial transactions, including but not limited to wallet transfers, domestic transfers, bills payment, mobile scoring, mobile ATM, and offline and online loan processing, among others. To date, UBX has over 200,000 B2B customers on its open finance platform.

UBX’s open finance platform also gave birth to SeekCap, an online lending marketplace, that enables lenders to reach MSMEs and offer them with affordable loans to help them jump start or expand their businesses. Last year, SeekCap processed over P7 billion in loans from the more than 50,000 MSMEs registered on the platform.

To complement these ventures, UBX also developed BUx, an all-in-one payment solutions platform that allows merchants of all sizes to accept all forms of payment, unifying payment channels from card payments, bank transfers, over-the-counter payments, to e-wallets into one solution.

“As the leader in open finance and as a strong government ally, we vow to develop more products and services to help the country accelerate our shared goal of including the majority of Filipinos in the financial systems,” Januszczak said.

For more information about the company or learn more about UBX, please visit www.ubx.ph.

About UBX

UBX is the financial technology venture studio and fund of UnionBank of the Philippines. UBX is predicated on a future where financial services are invisible: seamlessly embedded into the experiences and activities that truly matter to businesses and people. For partnerships, email us at [email protected].

Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBankRon )’s Batisan, CXG Physical Channels head, was one of the panelists at the recently wrapped AIBP Insights: The Digital Age in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance Forum. The emergence of PhyGital, a combination of physical and digital, in financial institutions was one of the issues explored, as was how this is affecting how customers perceive the services they receive.

The UnionBank executive talked about The ARK, the Bank’s award-winning, fully digital and paperless banking branch. “We did an experiment in one of our UnionBank’s branches in 2017. We digitized the transactions, the product applications. We empowered our people—calling them our branch ambassadors. We trained them not just to process transactions, but to engage with clients, to guide the customers on how to download our app, how to use the self-service machines, as well as handle digital conversion and advisory services,” Batisan said.

From just one, now there are more than 150 The ARKs all over the Philippines. Within the last four years, the Bank also saw a significant increase in the usage of self-service machines for cash and check deposits, cash withdrawal and other basic transactions, and in downloads for the UnionBank Online app, growing from about 300,000 users in 2017, to about 4 million to date.

“With that in mind, I think the role of our branch personnel have changed from transactional, to advisory and even selling. Now, they have time to sell insurance products, credit and debit cards, and other Bank products. They have become our sales and digital conversion team,” Batisan said.

Aside from the transformation of UnionBank’s spaces and people to meet the ever-changing needs of customers, essentially future-proofing the Bank, the cost of operating a physical branch was reduced significantly, contributing greatly to its bottom line.

“In 2020, we took a look at our network and saw that there were branches that had limited transactions but it didn’t mean that they didn’t have customers anymore. So, we rationalized and closed more than 10 branches then. But in terms of customer acquisition, we’ve gained a lot of customers especially through our digital account opening. For instance, we’ve opened more than one million accounts in 2021.”

With the ongoing changes in consumer behavior as a result of the accelerated shift to digital, Batisan believes that financial solutions providers should keep up, introducing measures that will provide customers with a sense of familiarity as they explore new and emerging digital fronts like cryptocurrency and the metaverse.

“With all of these new things that are happening, we should constantly operate in the idea that the path should still be safe,” Batisan added. “We must evaluate the basic notion of marketing, in which we must follow whatever is relevant to the customer.”