Philippines Fintech Mobile Wallet Payments are Fragmented: Pay Over Sound Technology ‘The Great Bridge’

MANILA, Philippines March 22, 2019, our team was lucky enough to be part of the round table discussion arranged by Future City Summit with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Professor Yunus together with the other Fintech companies in the Philippines. One of the key topics is Financial Inclusion where there are around sixty (60) registered Fintech companies in the Philippines where 98% are involved in payments.

Accessibility is not enough to transform the Philippines from cash-heavy to a cash-lite economy

Personally, there are two important things to consider when handling digital payments (Actually, there are three things, first is TRUST but this is going to be a lengthy discussion which deserves a separate article). “Accessibility” and “Acceptability” thanks to mobile devices and the internet, we can now access our mobile wallet anytime and almost anywhere. Today, this is where the digital wallet flourishes and beats the CASH outright in terms of accessibility. If you have an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) card and you live in the Philippines, chances are you may have experienced where you cannot withdraw cash over ATM because it ran out of money.

Acceptability, where can I use my mobile wallet?

If we want to accelerate the digital payments in the Philippines, then Fintech companies must learn how to tap the existing infrastructure and connect it to the new ones. Today, Fintech companies are busy deploying their own (not-interoperable) QR-code based payment services to their partner merchants. That is why the Philippines Fintech Mobile Wallet Payments are Fragmented.

Consider my recent experience with my favorite coffee shop. I noticed that they’re now accepting GCash mobile wallet payment, which should be great if you’re a GCash mobile wallet user. Better luck next time for GrabPay, PayMaya, coins.ph and other mobile wallet users because you won’t be able to spend your wallet balance here until such time they’ve partnered with this merchant. Today, if you visit shopping malls in the Philippines, it is not uncommon to see multiple QR-code over-the-counter (i.e., GCash QR-code and a separate QR-code for PayMaya).

As aforementioned, there are around sixty (60) registered Fintech companies in the Philippines where 98% are involved in payments. If we’re going to continue this way of implementation, eventually the printed QR-codes from different Fintech companies will occupy the entire counter of the shops, not to mention it is also expensive, consider the logistics cost of rolling out fragmented QR-code based payment setup.

Wouldn’t be great if mobile wallet users can pay over the existing bank infrastructure such as the conventional card POS (Point of Sale) terminals? The top banks in the Philippines have more than 100K card POS terminals across the country. If Fintech companies can leverage the existing infrastructure of the banks instead of independently deploying their own and fragmented QR-code based payment services, it will dramatically increase their acceptability, creating a powerful coalition of Fintech and banks payment network.

That is what Pearl Pay POS (Pay Over Sound) is all about.

100 % Interoperability on Legacy Payment Systems

Pearl Pay POS is powered by sound-based payment technology which allows secure communication between devices — enabling contactless proximity payments. Unlike the NFC-based payment technology it excludes non-NFC enabled devices, the operating principle of sound-based payment technology is that as long as the device has a microphone and a speaker, then it will work. That includes all mobile phones (i.e., smart and feature phones). It can also convert any card swiping machines and ATMs to start supporting a sound wave protocol for sending data, even though these devices do not have multi-range frequency enabling hardware.

Pearl Pay POS as a Standard Feature to Pearl Pay E-Wallet White Label Solution

What does it mean for the Pearl Pay rural banks’ members? Pearl Pay rural banks members will enjoy mainstream financial services such as mobile wallet payments and cash-in/cash-out to over more than 100K conventional card POS terminals across the Philippines.

As aforementioned, the operating principle of sound-based payment technology is that as long as the device has a microphone and a speaker, then it will work. That includes all mobile phones (i.e., smart and feature phones) where it can process payments between mobile phones (e.g., Smart Phone to Smart Phone, Feature Phone to Smart Phone and Vice Versa). Unlike QR code-based payment technology, it excludes the feature phones.

That’s what you call acceptability :)

Instead of building a wall through fragmented QR-code based payment set up, we will ensure that Pearl Pay POS technology will serve as “The Great Bridge” and will be open not just for commercial and rural banks but as well as to entire Philippine Fintech companies.

If China has UnionPay, and India has RuPay. The Philippines has Pearl Pay!

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