Digital payments accounted for 64.7% of total retail payments in 2025, says BSP

Digital payments grew to account for 64.7% of all total retail payments in the Philippines in 2025, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Tuesday.

The increase—from 57.4% of total retail payments in 2024—puts the country well within its 60%-70% target for digital payments in the Philippine Development Plan for 2023-2028, the central bank added.

“A lot of the growth is due to [the BSP's] insistence on interoperability, ensuring that a growing number of businesses and service providers are on one system,” BSP Governor Eli M. Remolona, Jr. said in a statement. “That brings in more users, which makes the network more valuable for everyone in it, including consumers, businesses, banks, e-wallets, and other platforms."

According to the BSP’s 2025 Report on the Status of Digital Payments in the Philippines, the increase in digital payments was accompanied by a 69.4% growth in the number of digital payment accounts and a 36.3% rise in merchant locations or business outlets that accept digital payments.

QR Ph and PesoNet

The BSP also found that transactions made through QR PH—the national QR code standard—the government's exceeded debit and credit card transactions for the first time in 2025, with 2.47 billion transactions through QR amounting to P1.16 trillion processed that year.

Transactions through PESONet—the BSP's electronic fund transfer credit payment scheme—also surpassed check payments.

The BSP said it expects digital payments to grow, with the help of policies such as its Circular No. 1238, which seeks reasonable transfer fees by requiring that any difference between intrabank and interbank transfer fees should reflect only the cost of routing a transaction through a payment network. — BM, GMA News