2 weeks Ago By Lance Spencer Yu
MANILA, Philippines – When it comes to contactless payments, the Philippines still has a lot of ground to cover compared to other countries. Today, around 40% of transactions in the country are made using contactless technology — a big jump from pre-pandemic days when it was just in the single digits. While that’s impressive progress, it’s still behind the global average, where roughly two-thirds (67%) of transactions are now tap to pay.
(READ: How long can you go cashless? Filipinos last for 10 days on average ) Still, most debit and credit cards from major payment networks like Visa, Mastercard, and JCB already come with contactless technology, letting customers pay by simply tapping their cards on the terminal. Mobile tap to pay solutions are expected to further boost this trend. “Using the mobile phone to tap, 1 out of 4 transactions were done on mobile contactless in 2022.
In 2023, [it’s] 1 out of 3 already,” Mastercard country manager Simon Calasanz said on Friday, September 13, referring to Asia-Pacific statistics. “So, you can see the demand for that kind of technology is increasing.” Mobile contactless payment is slowly spreading in the Philippines as banks start to roll out their own solutions.
For instance, on Friday, RCBC launched RCBC Pay, which lets customers link their RCBC Mastercard credit cardholders to their NFC-enabled Android smartphones. Using near field communication (NFC) technology, customers can then just tap their phone to pay at any terminal in the Philippines and abroad. “We’re not the first anymore, but we hope the customers will find our solution a better one,” RCBC Credit Cards chief commercial officer Mylene Bico said on Friday.
“For RCBC, we’ve always invested in digitalization because, of course, our commitment — as mentioned by our president and CEO — is that we’re passionate about delivering the best customer experience.” The MasterCard country manager also said that the payments giant is already “in discussion with other banks” to possibly bring similar contactless payment solutions to their customers. “You’ll see this becoming a more common payment method in the future,” Calasanz said.
This is a first for both RCBC and MasterCard, who are among the pioneers for mobile contactless payments in the Philippines. However, EastWest Bank led the way in 2023, becoming the first local bank to link their Visa cards to NFC-enabled phones with the launch of EastWest Pay. Getting more banks on board is the key to accelerating the rollout of mobile NFC payments, as the infrastructure itself isn’t the barrier — at least in urban areas with internet.
In the Philippines, over 300,000 merchants already accept Mastercard, with more than 92 million merchants worldwide supporting the technology. “In fact, in the Philippines, any MasterCard contactless terminal that you see with those lines like that, you can use this technology over there,” Calasanz said, referring to the commonly used symbol for contactless payments. CONTACTLESS .
Here is the symbol for contactless payments. Photo from MasterCard website. Another big barrier is the fact that Google Pay and Apple Pay have yet to integrate with local cards.
In countries like the United States, customers can already link their cards to these services and use their phones to tap and pay. While the apps developed by RCBC and EastWest are a step in the right direction, they still only work with their own credit cards. In other words, they aren’t the universal solutions that Google Pay or Apple Pay offer.
There’s also no clear timeline for when — or if — RCBC’s and EastWest’s tap to pay apps will become available on Apple devices. RCBC officials confirmed that their app is limited to Android. EastWest similarly said that EastWest Pay will not work on iOS since “Apple restricts access to its NFC antenna.
Only Apple Pay works with Apple devices.” In the meantime, it looks like you’ll still have to lug around your wallet and cards — unless you’re banking with RCBC or EastWest. – Rappler.
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