Philippines Things Know Tender

Banks and technological solutions companies continue to introduce new products that cater to specific groups such as those who love shopping and traveling and take-up is strong not only because of incentives but security features as well. However some people said the limit on the amount they can load in their prepaid cards is smaller compared to the amount they can spend when they use their credit cards. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas BSP Deputy Governor Chuchi Fonacier told the Philippine News Agency PNA Friday that the regulatory loading limit for a cash card is PHP100000. But Fonacier stressed the load cap is not absolute. EMIs electronic money issuers can always request for a higher limit provided that the purpose and use can be justified and there are mechanisms in place to ensure that such cash cards will not be used for money laundering and other illicit activities she added. Cash cards are now in demand since people have started to realize its benefits such as safer to carry than cash and because the central bank continues to push for the increase of electronic payments with a target for it to reach 20 percent of total transactions by 2020. Earlier this month Filipino-owned infrastructure platform firm OmniPay and global payments services company Diners Club International Ltd. launched their tie-up for the dollar-denominated OmniPay Diners Club Forex Prepaid Card. A plus for this card is it comes with a mobile app that allows holders to do real-time card-to-card transfer and quick response QR payments on top of the usual balance inquiry which can only be done through automated teller machines ATMs for some prepaid cards. OmniPay President and Chief Executive Officer Simoun Ung said ensuring the safety of the cards issued by their partner company is a must and is one of the challenges they need to face to be ahead of the pack. I guess one of our advantages is that we built our own and operate our entire IT information technology infrastructure he said. Ung said the company has noticed a lot of pent-up demand for payments card and projects an additional 2 million OmniPay Diners Club Forex Prepaid Card issuance by its first year. He stressed hey have put in place measures to prevent their cards from being used for money laundering. We do all traditional measures but more importantly I think the KYC know-your-customer has to be very strong. And one of the things that were working with the central bank on this to do an e- KYC he said. Ung noted they intend to undertake the KYC process by getting prospective customers biometrics. You can do things like that. Thats part of our front-end mitigation for the risk for money laundering he said. And the backend of course we track where the money goes. You can do that in terms of the velocity checks - whether we see a lot of same cards or same series of cards all spending at the same place and those types of things are on our system he added.