The Philippine Statistics Authority and Land Bank of the Philippines onboarded 8.4 million unbanked Filipinos last year, including 5.8 million who were able to open transaction accounts.
The PSA said in a statement this achievement was in line with the government’s push for financial inclusion.
PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa, who is also the national statistician and civil registrar-general, said “the opening of bank account is the first step towards financial inclusion, which is one of the benefits from PhilSys.”
“In partnership with LandBank, millions of Filipinos were able to open their very first bank account that they can use for savings, safer and faster money remittance, payment of bills and other online transactions,” Mapa said.
The PSA and LandBank achieved this goal through a co-location strategy, where registered persons were able to open transactional accounts with LandBank in PhilSys registration centers after their step 2 registration.
The service is free and provides registered persons formal access to financial services with the issuance of a banking card that requires no initial deposit and no maintaining balance.
PhilSys registrants who were issued LandBank prepaid cards used their accounts for various financial transactions.
LandBank recorded 108,473 transactions made by registered persons through their mobile banking application, point-of-sale, and over-the-counter transactions through various branches amounting to P275.8 million as of end-2022.
PSA and LandBank continue to work together in opening accounts for registered persons via LandBank’s agent banking partners nationwide and through the mobile app, LANDBANKPay.
The bank will also continue to issue prepaid cards to registrants who have transactional accounts but have not yet been issued prepaid cards during the onboarding and co-location.
