Payments

BSP Accelerates Implementation of the Person-To-Merchant QR Code System

The QR Ph Person-to-Merchant (P2M) payment facility, now fully implemented, now may be used in 473,000 merchant locations nationwide as of April 2022 which is almost double compared to the previous month.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported that there are 17 financial institutions participating in QR Ph P2M as of end June 2022.

The regulator added that the QR Ph P2M is expected to further enhance financial consumers’ access to safe, efficient, and reliable digital payments.

Launched in October 2021, QR Ph P2M enables interoperable digital payments between customers and merchants even if they maintain accounts with different financial service providers. It may also be used for bills payments in the future.

QR Ph was initially rolled out in 2019 for person-to-person (P2P) payments, which primarily caters to payments and remittances in the informal sector.

The implementation of QR Ph P2M is aligned with the BSP’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap 2020-2023 (DPTR), which aims to digitalise at least 50 percent of total retail payments in the country and onboard at least 70 percent of Filipino adults into the financial system by 2023.

Mamerto E. Tangonan

“The use of QR Ph P2M is convenient and cost-effective since it does not require expensive point of sale or data capture terminals to facilitate digital payments for individuals and businesses.

The BSP shall continue to engage the payments industry and relevant stakeholders to ensure the quality and responsiveness of digital payment services in the new normal. We ultimately want Filipinos to reap the benefits of a stronger and more inclusive Philippine economy,”

said Mamerto E. Tangonan, Deputy Governor of BSP.