Mobile Phone Banking and New Technologies: Providing New Channels to Serve Clients Better, Faster, and 24/7

July 4, 2011 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

Alternative ways of delivering banking services are changing the way rural banks are servicing their clients. Not only that, these innovations are also helping the Philippine Government reach families at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

During the 2011 RBAP-MABS National Roundtable Conference, rural banks shared how technology has been useful to them in expanding microfinance services.  As of May 2011, more than 160,000 rural bank clients have processed more than PhP10 billion (US$220 million) in mobile phone banking transactions via the GCASH platform.

Banking practices have been evolving and expanding coverage geographically, as well as in terms of network, client base, and products and services being offered to clients.  Mobile phone banking services were first introduced to rural banks through an effort promoted by the RBAP-MABS program back in 2004.

Read the rest of this entry

 

Filed Under: conferences & dialogues, events, MABS highlights, MABS tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

When I mention mobile phone banking services, what is the first idea that comes to your mind?

April 19, 2011 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

This was one of the questions asked at the focus group discussion (FGD) conducted recently in a small town of Laur in Nueva Ecija, Philippines.  The participants were borrowers of the local rural bank, GM Bank, based in Cabanatuan City.  The session was held to road test the financial education materials developed with assistance from the Microfinance Opportunities (MFO), partner of the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP).

RBAP, through its USAID-supported Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program, is receiving support from MFO as part of a joint project established between the latter and The MasterCard Foundation. The project is to support the adoption and sustained use of mobile phone banking (m-banking) services via increased financial education for clients of rural banks.

Read more

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mobile Phone Banking & Mobile Payments for Students: The GM Bank Experience

February 12, 2011 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

GM Bank is the largest rural bank in Nueva Ecija (Philippines) with its head office in Cabanatuan City, more than 3 hours by land north of Manila.  It has been in partnership with Globe’s G-Xchange Inc. (GXI) and the RBAP-MABS program and for its mobile phone banking initiative since 2006.  It is also one of the banks participating in the new Channel Management Initiative supported by USAID/Philippines and MICRA Philippines, which is supported by Mercy Corps through a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Channel Management Initiative focuses on developing partnerships between local merchant-partners who are accredited GCASH cash-in and cash-out outlets (CICOs).  The rural banks provide liquidity services to the CICOs as well as send customers to their shops.  The CICOs provide cash-in and cash-out services for the rural banks and help them in promoting mobile phone banking services.

Recently, GM Bank shared a new use case focused on students and schools to stimulate an m-banking ecosystem between the bank, its merchant-partners, students, and neighboring schools. The province, especially Cabanatuan City, is the educational center of the Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley regions. Read more

Filed Under: Channel Management Initiative, Features Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Mobile money wallets help microentrepreneurs in the Philippines

February 11, 2011 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

Microentrepreneurs in a Filipino market are saving time and money by accepting payments using their mobile phones.

Pearl merchant Cairon Macmac completes a sale using the electronic wallet on her cell phone. Ms. Macmac stated that accepting mobile phone payments “has improved my business sales, and now I encourage other vendors to use an electronic wallet on their phones.”

Pearl merchant Cairon Macmac completes a sale using the electronic wallet on her cell phone. Ms. Macmac stated that accepting mobile phone payments “has improved my business sales, and now I encourage other vendors to use an electronic wallet on their phones.”

Turning sideways to squeeze between the tightly packed stalls, customers stop to admire strings of white, pink, and green pearls displayed by Cairon Macmac and her family. The family runs a pearl business in the bustling Greenhills Shopping Center in Manila, Philippines, where customers seek out their unique designs. After years of managing the business, Ms. Macmac wanted to look for new ways to sell her products. She also grew tired of frequent trips to the bank to deposit cash or send money to family in Mindanao.

Read more

Filed Under: mobile phone banking client stories Tagged With: , ,

Providing M-Banking Services in a Remote Island: The Bangko Kabayan Experience

February 4, 2011 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

M-Banking allows rural banks to expand their reach to communities too small or too remote to justify a branch. Bangko Kabayan, working with the USAID-supported RBAP-MABS Program, has successfully piloted an approach that combines regular visits from bank officers with partnering with mobile money accredited merchants such as sari-sari stores, which provide cash-in, cash-out (CICO) services that allow bank clients to convert cash into mobile money or vice versa. This approach, called channel management, could be replicated by any rural bank that wishes to expand its customer reach to remote areas without the expense of building branches, thereby providing access to banking services cheaply and efficiently.

The RBAP-MABS Program Channel Management Initiative, with funding support from USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant from Mercy Corps, began its pilot phase in November 2010. In a recent visit in December 2010, RBAP-MABS interviewed the channel officers, merchant-partners, and clients of Bangko Kabayan. The team also visited one of the pilot areas located in Tingloy Island in Batangas Bay area, across Batangas City. This remote island can only be reached by a two-hour boat ride.
In the interviews with merchants and clients in the area, RBAP-MABS found out that both were quite enthusiastic about the bank’s GCASH-powered mobile phone banking services (MPBS). They were particularly interested in the Text-A-Deposit service, which allows them to save remotely through their mobile phones. This is one more example of how small rural banks can provide banking services with mobile money platforms in remote areas even without a branch.

The RBAP-MABS Program Channel Management Initiative, with funding support from USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant from Mercy Corps, began its pilot phase in November 2010. In a recent visit in December 2010, RBAP-MABS interviewed the channel officers, merchant-partners, and clients of Bangko Kabayan. The team also visited one of the pilot areas located in Tingloy Island in Batangas Bay area, across Batangas City. This remote island can only be reached by a two-hour boat ride.

In the interviews with merchants and clients in the area, RBAP-MABS found out that both were quite enthusiastic about the bank’s GCASH-powered mobile phone banking services (MPBS). They were particularly interested in the Text-A-Depositservice, which allows them to save remotely through their mobile phones. This is one more example of how small rural banks can provide banking services with mobile money platforms in remote areas even without a branch.

Bangko Kabayan hired two channel officers to separately conduct market research and identify potential merchant-partners who can be accredited by the mobile money issuer and act as cash-in and cash-out points. One of the channel officers visited Tingloy Island and surveyed key barangays.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Features, MABS highlights Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Text-A-Withdrawal Makes Access to Mobile Money Easier

December 7, 2010 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

Archie’s assistant handles the GCASH transactions when he and his wife are not around.

Mr. Archiebald “Archie” Beldad owns a pharmacy located in the town center of Cantilan, Surigao del Sur located in rural northeastern Mindanao. As a registered client of Cantilan Bank, a participating bank under the Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program, Archie began using GCASH for business in March 2007. He purchases and sells GCASH in small amounts and accepts GCASH as payment for his goods. He has a good credit record with the bank where he has been maintaining a deposit account for several years. Archie also uses the convenience of the Text-A-Withdrawal facility to withdraw from his deposit account and load up on GCASH. When he has extra funds in GCASH, he also uses Text-A-Deposit to send money back to deposit in his account remotely.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: mobile phone banking client stories Tagged With: , , , ,

New developments in Mobile Phone Banking for 2010 highlighted at National Roundtable Conference

June 30, 2010 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

Leaders from the mobile phone industry and rural banking met on June 3 to discuss new developments in mobile phone banking during the 2010 RBAP-MABS National Roundtable Conference in Manila.

Mr. Jaime Fraginal Jr., Head of Sales of G-Xchange, Inc. – a wholly owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom – first presented GCASH Remit, an instant cash pick-up service for domestic and international remittances.   This convenient service, accessible through 18,000 partners across the country (including 3,000 partners from the rural banking network), has low remittance charges for the sender and is free of charge for the beneficiaries.  Because there is no third party handling the cash and it requires a PIN number from the beneficiary, GCASH Remit is safe and secure.

By building the infrastructure to increase the flow of money throughout the nation, GCASH Remit looks to play a significant part in the development of the Philippine countryside as another remittance opportunity for accredited rural banks.

Read the rest of the article

Filed Under: conferences & dialogues, MABS tips Tagged With: , , , ,

Credit Scoring System, Netbooks, and new Mobile Phone Banking App introduced at the RBAP-MABS National Roundtable

June 29, 2010 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

Several technological developments for support and expansion of microfinance services were presented during the 2010 RBAP-MABS National Roundtable Conference held in Manila on June 2-3, 2010.

Rebecca HughesMs. Rebecca Hughes, Philippines Country Director of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), first introduced a credit scoring model and automated loan application process via netbooks.  The new loan application process via netbooks allows loan Account Officers to quickly and easily upload and prepare loan applications from the field.  In addition, IPA has also added a credit scoring system into the application to better predict the borrower’s likelihood of repayment based on certain indicators such as the borrower’s background, cash flow, debt capacity and past repayment patterns of comparable borrowers. For the staff and clients, the netbooks help speed up the processing of loan applications in the field.

While Ms. Hughes cautioned that not every bank will be able to implement the credit scoring system overnight, all banks can benefit from the automated loan applications via netbooks.  This can also provide banks with the first step in collecting data that can one day be utilized by the bank to implement a credit scoring system.

Read the rest of the article

Filed Under: conferences & dialogues, MABS tips Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mobile phone banking merchant partners help ease banking in Surigao

June 23, 2010 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

MPB 1A growing number of store owners are collaborating with rural banks and connecting to the GCASH network from Cantilan to Butuan City and across the region. These store owners are providing cash-in and cash-out services to support mobile phone banking services as well as mobile money transfer in these areas.

The partnership between RBAP-MABS and G-XChange, Inc. (GXI), Globe Telecom’s wholly owned subsidiary, has helped develop and implement mobile phone banking applications and m-commerce services for rural banks and their clients.  Based on a secure GCASH menu, mobile phone banking clients of accredited rural banks can receive loans, make payments and deposits, withdraw funds from their deposit accounts, receive money from relatives and friends, and even buy and sell goods remotely via GCASH.

Merchant-partners provide the opportunity for rural bank clients to conveniently deposit cash into or withdraw cash from their mobile wallets.  While rural banks in turn help to manage the liquidity needs of their merchant-partners.

Read the rest of the article

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Cantilan Bank Celebrates 30 Years of Progressive and Excellent Community Banking Services

June 18, 2010 By cbalingit Leave a Comment

By: Eric Miller, guest blogger

Cantilan BankMore than 500 attendees packed into a basketball gymnasium in Cantilan’s town square to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Cantilan Bank. The gala highlighted the banks remarkable growth over the past three decades and underscored the important role microfinance services played in their success.

MABS started working with Cantilan Bank 11 years ago, when it had just three branches and 35 employees. Now, the bank is 260 employees strong with 12 branches across Surigao. The bank-wide loan portfolio grew from around P50M to P652M. The number of microfinance borrowers is 39% of Cantilan’s total borrowers with a client base of over 8,400 hard-working microentrepreneurs, small farmers, and store owners. The number of deposit accounts is 58,522 with P524M in deposits. More importantly, there are 3 depositors to every borrower, and voluntary savings by micro-depositors comprise 50% of total microloans outstanding. Indeed, the bank has grown drastically by continuously evolving to better serve their clients.

Read the rest of the article

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts