OPEN PAYMENTS platform SynerFi has onboarded eight rural banks, allowing them to process transactions via InstaPay to expand the use of digital payments in underserved areas.

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Executive Vice-President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer Angelito M. Villanueva said at a briefing on Wednesday that they hope to onboard more banks onto the platform, which the bank will soon launch along with instant payment system Higala.

“We are targeting 40 rural banks to onboard. So far, we have the eight rural banks present here today who actually opened their settlement accounts with RCBC two weeks ago. We’re expecting more in the coming weeks,” Mr. Villanueva said.

The eight rural banks onboarded are Rural Bank of San Antonio, Inc.; Rural Bank of Lipa City (Batangas), Inc.; Progressive Rural Bank, Inc.; Banco Abucay, Inc.; Rural Bank of Hermosa (Bataan), Inc.; Money Mall Rural Bank, Inc.; First Philippine Partners Bank, Inc. (A Rural Bank); and Lagawe Highlands Rural Bank, Inc.

InstaPay is a real-time, low-value electronic fund transfer facility for transactions up to P50,000 and is mostly used for remittances and e-commerce.

Aside from offering InstaPay transactions, connecting to SynerFi will allow rural banks to create their own digital app through the platform’s white label mobile banking application with digital onboarding, current and savings account and payments services, and a teller web application.

RCBC and Higala hope to launch the platform within the quarter as they are still awaiting the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) approval of their electronic payment and financial services license.

“The bottomline is really having to level the playing field, democratizing access to digital payments, and making sure every Filipino in the geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas would now be able to avail and enjoy the benefits of going digital,” Mr. Villanueva said.

Higala President and Chief Executive Officer Winston L. Damarillo said that they want to boost InstaPay transactions done through SynerFi.

“There are about 152 million transactions going on in InstaPay day to day… Higala, our platform’s goal is to double the capacity of that. So, about 300 million is what we can handle. The importance of that is when you have payment systems that are national in scale, we need it to be extremely reliable,” he said.

SynerFi will be supported by the extension of Higala’s seed funding round to $4 million, led by  Talino Venture Studios, Chemonics International, Kadan Capital, Tenco Capital, and 1982 Ventures.

“We’re super excited about the fact that it’s not only Filipinos investing in the Philippines, but a lot of the foreign venture capitalists are investing in the Philippines as well,” Mr. Damarillo said.

“The $4 million is intended to launch what we already have today. As you know, we’re not just investing in our technology, but we’re also investing in other rural banks’ implementation because all the rural banks that live inside SynerFi now have their own mobile app and their own course system. We’re extending our investment to enable that part of it.” — Aaron Michael C. Sy