Digital Payments

SIM Registration Urged as 20% Risk Losing Access Digital Payments

The FinTech Alliance Philippines encourages mobile phone users to register their SIM cards in compliance with the nationwide SIM Registration Act (RA 11934).

Unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated after July 26, 2023, potentially affecting 20 percent of mobile phone users’ access to digital payments, electronic transactions, and one-time-pin authorizations.

However, the original registration deadline was April 26, 2023 and it has been extended by 90 days to address digital literacy and government ID-related concerns.

Lito Villanueva

“Under this law, we aim to dramatically reduce cases of mule accounts, bots, and fraudulent transactions. This will improve the security, safety, and trust among digital users,” said Lito Villanueva, founding chairman of the FinTech Alliance Philippines.

“With more registered SIM card users, we can continue to onboard more and more unbanked Filipinos into the financial ecosystem with ease and without interruption,” he added.

As of April 20, 2023, around 45 percent of the 168 million nationwide subscriber base have registered their SIMs. According to the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the registration rate is nearing 80 percent when considering only the estimated 100 million active SIMs.

Featured image credit: edited from freepik