BancNet taps Fime to boost Instant Payments in the Philippines

By Gloria Mathias

BancNet, the Philippine-based domestic scheme, has selected Fime to support the onboarding, testing, and certification process for its instant payments service, InstaPay.

BancNet is the Clearing Switch Operator (CSO) for InstaPay and has been authorised by the central bank to operate a Designated Payment System (ODPS), with InstaPay being a Prominently Important Payment System (PIPS).

Through BancNet, InstaPay-participating financial institutions will be able to utilise the Fime Test Factory platform to test their instant payment solutions based on the ISO 20022 specification, the international standard for financial messaging.

The automated and cloud-based testing platform, combined with Fime’s support for BancNet throughout the testing process, will significantly reduce the time required to onboard InstaPay participating institutions. This will allow institutions to launch their instant payment services to their customers more quickly. As well as reducing time-to-market, the bespoke testing and certification platform ensures that InstaPay participants will experience the same seamless testing and certification journey.

Elmarie Reyes, CEO of BancNet, shared, “Since 2014, Fime has supported our mission to enable the safe, efficient, and reliable delivery of payment services in the Philippines.”

“With Fime’s continued support, we can do our part in helping the financial industry to increase adoption of InstaPay further, helping more citizens to make payments instantly anywhere, anytime,” added Reyes.

“We look forward to building on our ten-year partnership with BancNet to help take its InstaPay service to the next level. Our goal is to support BancNet to bring its members into the ecosystem quickly and efficiently, ” said James Daniels, Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, Fime. “We are proud to support this journey to drive financial inclusion and digitalisation in the Philippines through the automated test tool facilitating convenient, easy, and cost-effective payments.”