By The Daily Tribune
The Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) is working with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to bring digital banking to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), including sari-sari stores.
Lito Villanueva, RCBC executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer, said the bank has engaged with the DTI to further promote “Diskartech,” a financial inclusion super app benefiting 1,200 Negosyo Centers nationwide.
Negosyo Centers provide business-related services to MSME that represent close to 99 percent of businesses in the country.
“We know most of them are really individual entrepreneurs running their own business. So that’s why one of the things we will focus on is how to enable 1.3 million sari-sari stores, including market vendors and online casual sellers that you find in the various social media platforms and channels,” he said at the National MSME Resilience e-forum.
Since the Diskartech was launched this month, the app has posted 8,000 to 9,000 downloads a day from all 17 regions although the bank has not yet started marketing.
“And in fact across all regions nationwide, we already have Diskartech users. That is why the agriculture sector is something that would be a good thing for us to capture and service because in the digital sphere, no one should be left behind and everyone is included,” he said.
Villanueva said the bank is looking for collaboration between the private and the public sectors “towards a common goal which is really to uplift the lives of our MSME” by adapting to digital processes for efficiency, speed and scale.
“At the end of the day, it will be meant to address or to service the unbanked and underserved segments of the population,” he said.
Villanueva said they have partnered with Bayad Centers thus, all their over 400 dealers could be found in the Diskartech app.
“That would include government agencies, including SSS (Social Security System), Pag-IBIG, DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs), etc. so you can do the payments. You could even facilitate payment on behalf of people in your community who do not have access to smartphones or any data services, so you can also earn,” he added.
Source: https://tribune.net.ph/index.php/2020/07/28/rcbc-brings-digital-banking-to-msme/