The Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) is an association of banks with the objective of bringing the benefits of the economic system to increasing numbers of rural customers through a strong, responsive rural banking system. This association is older than fifty years and have a track record of working effectively to improve the conditions of millions of people living in the rural areas of the Philippines. As such, this association is ideally placed to leverage the benefits that mobile banking bring. And this is exactly what the association is doing.Working closely with Globe and their GCash product, the RBAP effectively increased cash-in and cash-out points to more than 18 000. In conjunction with GCash, this association developed a number of specific products that can be used by their members to facilitate payments and rudimentary banking transactions. By working with GCash, both the mobile payment provider and the bank association are seeing benefits.
These actions have lead to and increase of 45% in mobile phone banking transactions within the rural banking sector. The cumulative amount of mobile phone banking transactions in the accredited rural banks already exceed 5 billion pesos. This is a great example of how a mobile banking platform can assist associations with an objective to bring effective banking services to the poor.