MANILA — Operations of Philippine Payments and Settlement System (PhilPaSS) will be suspended on December 26, 2017 and January 2, 2018 in line with Malacanang’s declaration of work suspension in government offices and schools during the said dates.
This was announced by PhilPaSS Director Bella S. Santos in an advisory dated Dec. 18, 2017 but was released to media outlets only on Friday (December 22).
PhilPaSS is a real time gross settlement system under the supervision of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) wherein processing and final settlement of fund transfer is done continuously.
For one, the PhilPaSS’ REMIT system is being used by banks for the settlement of remittances in a faster, safer and cheaper way.
Before the implementation of this remittance settlement system for banks, financial institutions hire couriers to deliver the money to banks of remittance beneficiaries.
The system provides Overseas Filipinos (OFs) cheaper transaction cost for remittance for credit to the accounts of the beneficiaries maintained in banks that are now connected to the PhilPaSS REMIT system.
The system was initially used in May 2010 but full operations started only in October of the same year after 12 banks finally established their connectivity to the PhilPaSS REMIT System.