BSI Article: How do you send funds to large populations who don't have bank accounts?

Today, in the thick of the COVID-19 crisis, how do you get funds to people in your life who have no bank accounts? To your minimum-wage employees? To your casual workers?

Today, nearly everyone's mobility severely restricted - and rightly so. Much fewer bank branches are open; and those that do open have shortened operating hours. And if you're in Sta. Ana, Manila, and your nearest open branch is in Makati, you have to line up for long minutes at COVID checkpoints - twice. And risking exposure to COVID-19 the whole time.

But you're still one of the well-off ones if you even have a bank account. Seventy-seven percent of adult Filipinos have no bank account of any sort, said the Bangko Sentral (BSP) in its 2017 Financial Inclusion Survey*.

And in the same year, the Bangko Sentral reported, 33.9% of local government units (LGUs) remained unbanked**.

Obviously, employees of large companies won't have this problem. We can't imagine any San Miguel or Honda Philippines employee not having a bank account. Nor will the employees of a significant chunk of SMEs that form Balmori Software's client base..

But for sure some SMEs will have at least some workers who have been accustomed to getting their pay in cash, and who do not own bank accounts.

How do you get their salaries to this category of employee? And how about those unbanked LGUs?

Help is at hand.

In the past three to five years, a class of financial enterprise has sprung up in the Philippines. They're called financial technology firms, or fintech.

One of them is a company called Bloom Solutions, with offices in Legaspi Village, Makati.

Bloom operates in the remittance space, using - for transactions security - the blockchain technology that's been associated with cryptocurrency.

With the corona virus lockdown of the past two weeks, Bloom's BloomX online remittance service has been proving its usefulness. Bloom has been working with prominent remittance companies like Palawan and Cebuana Lhuillier since before the COVID-19 crisis.

Recognizing the sudden urgent need to provide convenient, secure money transfer at a newly intensified retail level, Bloom is making their facilities available to SMEs and individual customers.

If you suddenly find yourself in urgent need of funds remittance facilities that involve zero travel, take a look at their infographic below.

Click here to continue reading this article online.