The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said the implementation of the national identification system has achieved its goals of onboarding unbanked Filipinos while providing a valid proof of identity that can be used to transact with the government and private sector.
PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said that the Land Bank of the Philippines onboarded 8.4 million unbanked Filipinos last year, and 5.8 million of whom were able to open transaction accounts.
The PSAs said they achieved this goal through a co-location strategy, where registered persons were able to open transactional accounts with Land Bank in PhilSys registration centers after their Step 2 registration.
This service is free and provides registered persons formal access to financial services with the issuance of a banking card that requires no initial deposit and no maintaining balance, Mapa said.
As of Dec. 31, 2022, Land Bank recorded 108,473 transactions made by registered persons through their mobile banking application, point-of-sale (POS), and over-the-counter transactions through its various branches amounting to P275.8 million.
Moreover, the PSA reported that the agency has successfully issued 22.2 million ePhilIDs to PhilSys-registered Filipinos as of Feb. 14.
The PSA also gradually rolled out a website through which a portable document format (PDF) copy of the ePhilID can be downloaded, providing registered persons the convenience of an ID that can be stored in their mobile devices.
“Through this strategy, registered persons can now conveniently download their ePhilID on their mobile device and use it in transactions anytime,” Mapa said, who is also the National Statistician and Civil Registrar General.
“Just like the PhilID, the ePhilID holds the same functionality and validity whether printed on paper or as a PDF file,” he added.
Registered persons who receive an SMS sent by the PSA may download the ePhilID.
Similar to the PhilID, the ePhilID also has a QR code which serves as its security feature. It can be scanned using PhilSys Check via verify.philsys.gov.ph, an identity authentication tool that cross-checks the data stored in the QR code against the data printed on the ePhilID.
Meanwhile, the PSA continues to closely work with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Philippine Postal Corporation (Post Office) to expedite the printing and delivery of PhilIDs.
As of Feb. 10, 2023, a total of 23,934,533 PhilIDs have already been delivered.