The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for the digital disbursement of the 2nd tranche of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP).

Under the agreement, the DSWD and BSP look forward to an expeditious means of distributing the SAP to the beneficiaries while complying with the health and safety protocols of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management ofEmerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID). The DSWD and BSP emphasized that digital electronic disbursement through transaction accounts, like bank or e-money accounts undertaken by duly authorized financial service providers (FSPs), is the most expedient way to accomplish this task.

The MOA also stipulates that the BSP will assist DSWD in the technical discussions with partner FSPs to ensure the effective implementation of account-based and digital/electronic disbursements.

In its letter to DSWD Undersecretary for Operations, Atty. Aimee Torrefranca-Neri, the BSP explained that in identifying the FSPs, primary considerations will be given to the presence of payout partners to ensure ease and ability to cash out by beneficiaries, presence of any business model institution, historical experience in commercial roll out, and type of cash out points that may contribute to ensuring liquidity/availability of cash.

DSWD welcomes this partnership with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. It has the expertise on digitization that is needed to ensure the smooth, efficient, and speedy distribution of the cash subsidy to the beneficiaries. BSP also has the regulatory power over financial service providers, thus, it knows which perform well.

DSWD is now finalizing important details of the distribution process of the SAP second tranche with the participating FSPs. Distribution of digital payment is expected to start next week. ###