Mobile Phone Banking Blog

Cantilan Bank identified the upland area of Ban-ban - a small sitio in Barangay Paniquian of Carrascal town – as one of the places to promote their Text-A-Payment service. Banban is relatively hard to reach due to rough, dusty roads that zigzag and are quite steep at some stretches. Cantilan Bank’s main branch has around 45 microloan clients in Banban, borrowing in groups or individually. Group loan borrowers gather weekly with their payments on hand to meet and give their payments to the bank’s account officers, who go to the center of Bgy. Paniquian for weekly collections. On the other hand, individual borrowers have to go to the bank to pay. 

To save fare money, most borrowers usually walk from the sitio to the center of Bgy. Paniquian, which take them around 30 minutes. They then take a 15-minute motorcycle ride from Paniquian to the bank’s branch, which costs PhP60 (to and from the bank branch). Motorcycles or habal-habal are the only means of transportation there.

The bank was aware that clients were willing to pay through Text-A-Payment, since they can save PhP60 and an hour and a half of their time weekly if they use the service. Where to cash-in and load their mobile wallets to send loan payments was, however, a problem. Clients then began to ask Larry Bat-ao, someone they knew and trusted, to buy GCASH for them in order to allow them to send their loan payments to the bank. Larry, a native resident of the place, runs a sari-sari store (variety store) and owns a tree farm. He has been Cantilan Bank’s micro borrower and depositor for some time.Larry pays his own loan to Cantilan Bank through Text-A-Payment. He also uses Text-A-Deposit and Text-A-Withdrawal service to send and withdraw money to and from his bank account. He pays semi-month and even sells GCASH to other bank clients in the community who make payments to the bank each week.Larry plans to use his mobile money via GCASH to expand his business. He is planning to engage in a “long-distance-buy-and-sell business”, where he will send to ETC. - a grocery that is also a bank partner-merchant that accepts GCASH for payment- through text, the list of the goods he wants to buy and then pay thru GCASH. Based on his plan, the orders would be delivered to his clients’ sari-sari stores. “Ang Mobile Phone Banking Services (MPBS) gyud naghatag sa amu ug sayon, barato ug labi na sa tanan seguro nga serbisyo sa pag padala ug kwarta” (Mobile Phone Banking Services (MPBS) gives comfort, convenience and secure mode of receiving money transfers).

cbalingit :: Sep.25.2008 :: mobile phone banking client stories ::

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