Digital Banking Philippines

RCBC’s New Digital Bank to Focus on Philippines’ Underserved Markets

The Board of Directors of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) has approved the creation of cloud-based digital bank with a rural bank license as disclosed with the Philippine Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Once regulatory approvals are secured, RCBC’s virtual bank will become the Philippines’ first digital bank deployment by a local universal bank. So far, three entities with digital banking operations have been given a green light by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, namely ING, CIMB and Tonik, all owned by regional companies.

Eugene Acevedo

The new digital bank will be run by Lito Villanueva, RCBC executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer, RCBC president Eugene Acevedo said.

“This development is a critical component of RCBC’s overall digital blueprint in reaching the grassroots and bring in millions of unbanked and underserved Filipinos. 2020 will definitely be an exciting year for all of us,”

Acevedo said.

Lito Villanueva

The launch of a virtual bank is seen to allow RCBC to reach out to a bigger retail market base and serve low-income segments.

“Competitiveness must be enhanced through convergence of data-driven products and open banking to drive exponential growth,”

Villanueva said.

Meanwhile, RCBC has registered 564-percent year-on-year growth in transaction count in its ATM Go digital agency banking deployment, to 1.2 million last year from 186,000 in 2018. Throughput also increased by 521 percent to P3.3 billion. RCBC ATM Go, touted as the country’s first neighborhood ATM, enables any Bancnet ATM cardholder to withdraw cash through rural banks, sari-sari stores, drugstores, cooperatives and microfinance institutions nationwide.