Balmori Software Inc.

[ Article ]

COVID-19 crisis

Posted on 2020 April 02

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.

This is the general procedure:

1. Bloom will ask you to submit a spreadsheet with the relevant employees' data, including the peso amounts you wish to remit, of course.

2. Bloom gives you a quote and then waits for your deposit before they process the remittance.

3. Bloom sends you its UnionBank account details and the exact amount you'll need to send (remittance amount + Bloom's fees).

4. You execute an online bank transfer to Bloom's UnionBank account so you don't have to leave your house. (Cutoff time is 1 p.m.)

5. Bloom instructs its relevant and appropriate remittance partner (e.g., Palawan, Lhuillier, etc.) to pull the trigger on the remittances.

6. Your recipients will get SMS alerts with instructions on how to pick up their cash within the day.

And, oh, Bloom Solutions is making this service available to individuals and households as well, not just organizations.

If you represent a larger company (bigger than say 50 employees, or have a payroll greater than 500,000PHP in aggregate size), Bloom will likely need to ask for basic business information such as your business registration and permits. Otherwise, you would only need to fill in the form at https://bit.ly/bloomindividual.

We at Balmori Software have made use of this resource. (And by the way, we're getting no compensation of any kind from Bloom Solutions for this article.) If this service is something you think will be useful to you, you can reach out to Bloom Solutions by visiting their website: https://www.bloom.solutions.

- rsr

* "77% of Filipinos remain unbanked - BSP" by Luchi de Guzman, CNN Philippines, published 2018 July 11
** "More Filipinos now have deposit accounts, says BSP" by Daxim L. Lucas - Inquirer Business, published 2019 February 01

Balmori Software is supporting in word and deed the stay-home-stay-safe rule aimed at fighting COVID-19. This article was produced with the teamwork of a writer on Arnaiz Avenue, Makati; a senior manager critiquing from Antipolo; a resource person in a condo on Ayala Avenue, and a technician/programmer who put the layout together in southern Cavite province. We hope you're equally fortunate in being able to work from home. For our brothers and sisters who do not have this luxury, we hope the above article helps you in working to make their lives just a little bit easier.





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