The Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) and its Microenterprise Access to Banking Service (MABS) program supported by USAID/Philippines awards a plaque of recognition to Globe Telecom through its wholly-owned mobile commerce subsidiary G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI). The award is in recognition of their unrelenting efforts to promote the use of the GCASH platform for RBAP-MABS mobile banking technology as a tool to provide world-class banking services for microentrepreneurs, small farmers, and low-income households.
GXI was also recognized for being able to execute quickly and rapidly to meet the growing demands of the rural banking industry during the recent 6th MABS National Roundtable Conference & EAGLE Awards Ceremony.
The National Roundtable conference is an annual event with RBAP-MABS participating banks that is intended to increase the awareness of participant banks in the latest trends and innovations in microfinance. The theme for this year’s conference is “Opportunities in Microfinance amidst the Global Financial Crisis.”
GXI’s productive partnership with the RBAP-MABS resulted in positively assisting rural banks to adopt new technology. With the support of GXI, rural banks are now able to offer improved products and services that are more cost-effective and allow greater outreach to more clients.
“We would like to express our gratitude to RBAP-MABS for acknowledging Globe’s efforts in helping Filipinos gain access to banking services. We never would have the success that we have now in pushing mobile technology as an important tool in rural banking had it not been for the partnership with RBAP and MABS. We are proud of this partnership honed over the years of shared business development work and shared dedication,” said Ferdz dela Cruz, Globe Consumer Wireless Business Group Head.
GXI and RBAP-MABS have been working together since early 2005 to develop and roll-out projects that provide clients of rural banks access to complete banking transactions. Using the GCASH payment platform, mobile phone banking services (MPBS) developed under the RBAP-MABS Program were made available to more than 500 rural bank branches and their clients.
These services include making micro-loan payments (Text-A-Payment or TAP), paying bills (Text-A-BillPay or TAB), making deposits (Text-A-Deposit or TAD) and withdrawals (Text-A -Withdrawal or TAW), sending or receiving domestic or international remittances (Text-A-Remittance or TAR), and disbursing and receiving salaries (Text-A-Sweldo or TAS) – using only their mobile phones through GCASH.
GXI President Rizza Maniego-Eala said, “We believe that MABS is the catalyst that effectively combines efforts of RBAP and GXI in addressing the growth of the lower socio-economic group in the country. In three short years this synergy has brought low cost mobile banking solutions to a greater number of rural banks, enabling a greater range of improved services to benefit their huge base of clients. Mobile banking through GCASH as we know it today has been proven to be an efficient technology solution for lower income segments, converting many unbanked customers into banked clients with access to various financial services.”
Together, Globe and RBAP-MABS will continue to make it easy for Filipinos living in the rural areas to have better access to financial services.
Five of the MABS participating banks were honored during the event. Among them were Greenbank, Cantilan Bank, First Macro Bank, Cooperative Bank of Misamis Oriental and Bangko Kabayan because they made it to the list of top microfinance institutions globally in terms of outreach to depositors.