MANILA, Philippines - A study group of 10 key officers from the Bank of Tanzania and the Bank of the Republic of Burundi visited the Philippines last month under a Knowledge Exchange Program arranged by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). The representatives came to study the policy and regulatory environment around electronic money issuers and mobile phone banking. The Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (RBAP-MABS) program presented its experiences in mobile phone banking.

The delegates were keenly interested in learning from the experiences of the rural banks in using mobile money platforms to facilitate greater access to banking services. The delegates visited the BSP to learn about the supervision and regulation of electronic money issuers.

They also visited the two pioneering mobile money providers, Smart Communications (Smart), which manages the Smart Money services, and Globe’s G-Xchange Inc. (GXI), which operates the GCASH platform. Since 2006, 60 accredited rural banks with over 900 branches and other banking offices have already processed more than P6 billion in mobile phone banking transactions.