Major Bank In Philippines Taps IBM For Japan Blockchain Remittance

One of the largest banks in the Philippines, The Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), has recently announced a new remittance payments service from Japan that will use blockchain technology.

The vice president at RCBC spoke to reporters this Thursday, revealing that the banking giant is currently developing the blockchain platform in order to enable cheaper and faster remittances for the overseas Filipino workers in Japan.

As the senior bank official told Businessworld:

“For the OFWs in Japan, [this service] will make remittance faster and cheaper as we will collect less fees,”

RCBC has also partnered with the technology giant IBM and another partner which is currently a secret – in order to develop the blockchain platform. As Narcisco stated:

“IBM has decided to pilot it with 15 banks around the world, we’re the only one in the Philippines that they included in this pilot test,”

There are not many details about the type of blockchain that this project will deploy – and IBM was not available for a comment at press time. Meanwhile, RCBC is partnering with two Japanese banks as well, one of them being the Tokyo-based Resona Bank.

According to data, cash remittances in the Philippines hit a record of $31.3 billion in 2017 while the personal remittances reached a high of $3 billion. According to data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (which is the central bank):

“The 2017 level of OFW’s personal remittances accounted for 10.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 8.3 percent of gross national income (GNI),”

Right now, RCBC is looking to pivot away from the inter-banking system to a decentralized one mostly because of the high fees associated with the SWIFT fees.

“You will not need SWIFT anymore because it’s expensive. Remittance will happen in real time, bypassing all other parties.” the senior bank official concluded.