The Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) through its USAID-supported Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program will now receive support from Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) and The MasterCard Foundation to assist the expansion of mobile phone banking services via increased financial education for customers and clients of rural banks.
Rural Bank Mobile Phone Banking Services Set to Expand in the Philippines
There are already 900 accredited rural bank branches and sub-offices offering mobile phone banking services via the GCASH platform, benefiting 122,000 rural bank clients. More than PhP six billion (US $130 million) in mobile phone banking transactions have been processed by these rural banks and the volume of transactions is increasing.
Through this partnership, RBAP-MABS will further accelerate this growth by renewing the educational campaign for its mobile phone banking initiative. RBAP-MABS will leverage its partnerships with rural banks, Globe and its gateway SMS service provider to develop an improved m-banking toolkit for rural banks officers and staff, their merchant partners and their clients. This toolkit will include instructional videos, web-based distance learning tools and mobile banking guides for improving customer education. RBAP-MABS intends for these materials to be publicly available online, transferrable to and among mobile phones, and deliverable through Internet applications and channels.
