e-Community project targets 8-16 million rural Filipinos

Business Mirror

January 20, 2006

e-Community project targets 8-16 million rural Filipinos

IMAGINE providing rural folks with electronic cards that will serve so many purposes. They can use the cards to receive remittances from their loved ones abroad, to pay taxes, to buy stuff from groceries and department stores, to pay bills, etc.

It surely will revolutionize the way rural folks will be handling money, and the possibilities of the uses of the card are tremendous.

This is what the Canadian-based SkyMark Financial Group intends to do in the Philippines in cooperation with its local partners: it will issue cards to rural folks.

It plans to target the eight million to 16 million Filipinos in the rural areas who have yet to be reached by the wonders of the electronic financial service.

At a press briefing Thursday in Makati 's InterContinental Hotel, Khalid Ataya, chief executive officer of SkyMark Financial, owner of the Vancouver-based PayGen International and the international card association, "Cashless Card," introduced what he calls the "e-Community Project" together with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP).

It involves the deployment of Cashless Card payment system in each of the country's municipalities.

To push the e-Community project, SkyMark will invest some $40 million to $50 million. The project's rollout will be in the next 60 days, said Ataya.

The project is described as a "unified and cost-effective end-to-end electronic solution for government, commerce, banking and telecommunications to enhance the efficiency of the delivery of social and economic services of a municipality regardless of size and location."

To reach the 1,502 municipalities across the country, SkyMark will be working with the LMP.

On this project, LMP will be coordinating with SkyMark's local partner, the ASECNet Inc., with which SkyMark has launched a joint-venture partnership, Cashless Card Philippines.

The Cashless Card Philippines has already entered into a memorandum of agreement with the LMP to assist municipal mayors in undertaking the e-Community project.

ASECNet is a subsidiary of Automated Systems & Equipment Corp. (ASEC), a local company involved in banking technologies and commissioned by USAID to develop an electronic banking system for the country's rural banks. The company represents the interests in the Philippines of SkyMark and PayGen International.

SkyMark has established a worldwide payment infrastructure company designed to tackle the challenges of global payment market and create an unrivalled portfolio of traditional and alternative payment solutions that adapt to market and technological developments, building the foundations that global business requires to support international commerce.

ASECNet president Florentino Roque said the e-Community project, which will be implemented primarily by the municipal governments with the cooperation of the rural banks, will "connect the engines and drivers of countryside mobilization, particularly the municipal economic and financial infrastructure, and the overseas Filipino workers and entrepreneurs, whose remittances and investments prime the local economy."