January 1, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has extended the transitory period for compliance with Circular 1195, which outlines the consumer redress mechanism standards for account-to-account electronic fund transfers (EFTs).
Initially set to end on Dec. 31, the deadline has been moved by three months to March 31, 2025, following Monetary Board Resolution 1471 issued on Dec. 19.
The extension, announced through a memorandum signed by BSP Governor Eli Remolona Jr. on Dec. 27, aims to give clearing participants of InstaPay and PESONet, including automated clearing houses (ACHs) and clearing switch operators, additional time to align their systems with the central bank’s consumer protection standards.
Circular 1195, approved earlier in June, introduced guidelines to ensure that BSP-supervised institutions offering EFTs through their participation in ACHs provide timely and appropriate consumer recourse mechanisms on issues lodged by consumers.
The standards are intended to build trust in digital payments, particularly for person-to-person (P2P), person-to-merchant (P2M) and person-to-biller (P2B) transactions.
Based on the new rules, the timeframe of transferring money to the account of a beneficiary should be within two to three seconds from receipt of clearing advice. For multiple fund transfers, the time should not be more than two hours.
The originating financial institution should also provide timely notifications to inform the sender about the current status of the transaction, while the receiving financial institution should inform the beneficiary about the funds received.
Meanwhile, rejected, returned and timed-out transactions should prompt financial institutions to return the funds to the sender within one hour from the receipt of send instruction.
The parameters when to collect fund transfer fees, as well as the criteria as to when to return the collected fee, must be clearly established in the ACH operating guidelines.
Senders should not bear fees for unsuccessful transfers and transactions that did not materialize due to operational disruptions.
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