CALOOCAN CITY, July 4 (PIA) -- payment of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) cash subsidy through digital platform will start early next week.
DSWD Virtual presser held on Thursday, July 2
Social Welfare & Development Secretary Rolando Bautista, in a virtual presser on Thursday said, they seek the assistance and guidance of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to tap six (6) financial service providers (FSPs) who will conduct the digital payment.
In identifying the FSPs, primary considerations were 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 the commercial roll-out, and type of cash-out points that may contribute to ensuring liquidity/availability of cash.
DSWD signed a memorandum of agreement with the chosen participating FSPs namely: GCash, RCBC, Robinsons Bank, PayMaya, Starpay, and Unionbank, together with the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) on Tuesday, June 30, at the Department’s Central Office in Batasan to formalize the implementation of this initiative.
The FSPs will undertake the digital electronic disbursement through restricted transactional accounts, like bank or e-money accounts, and ensures that the cash subsidies will reach the beneficiaries in the most expedient and reliable manner while still complying with the existing health and safety protocols.
LBP will be the main depository bank and will be responsible for downloading funds to the FSPs. LBP will credit the program fund into the FSPs funding accounts maintained with its Batasan Branch or in other financial institution based on the instruction and payroll documents provided by DSWD within twenty-four hours from receipt of payroll documents.
The FSPs, on the other hand, will credit the emergency subsidies into the beneficiaries’ restricted transactional or nominated accounts within 24 hours upon receipt of the funds from LBP.
The Department reminded the beneficiaries that there will be a minimal amount of cash out fee of not more than P50.00 to be deducted from their subsidies, if they will opt to withdraw from the partner-outlets of the FSPs.
Bautista clarified that not only those who were able to register in ReliefAgad application will be given the SAP 2nd tranche through electronic payment, but also those family beneficiaries who were in the list submitted by the local government units (LGUs), validated and deduplicated by DSWD.
The Secretary also said that there are limited areas that will be given the 2nd tranche because DSWD adhered to the guidelines stipulated in the Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 2, S. of 2020, Executive Order No. 112, S 2929 dated April 30 and the Memorandum issued by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea on May 2.
The areas include Region III except for Aurora Province, National Capital Region (NCR), Region CALABARZON, Benguet, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Cebu Province, Bacolod City, Davao City, Albay Province, and Zamboanga City.
The additional waitlisted beneficiaries nationwide will also receive aid in the second tranche of distribution, as indicated in JMC No. 2.
Meanwhile, in the latest update on SAP distribution as reported by Bautista, DSWD’s Field Offices continues to distribute the SAP cash subsidy to waitlisted families in the different parts of the country. A total amount of P64.3M was distributed to waitlisted families in geographically isolated disadvantaged areas (GIDAs) in the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR), and Regions 1 and 3. Some 1.3M 4Ps cash cardholders also received their subsidy. The whole amount distributed is P6.8B to 1.4million beneficiaries. (DSWD/PIA-NCR)
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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