UnionBank Debuts One-Stop Payments Hub UPay

UnionBank of the Philippines has debuted UPay, which helps smaller businesses manage cash and get access to financing, a report says.

It will also allow for all-in-one payments to be done remotely.

“Although the pandemic has caused a major change in the MSME business landscape, it has also brought much attention to them. For us at Union Bank, we have a greater purpose of empowering our MSMEs to uplift the businesses, because we believe that financial inclusion is closely connected with economic prosperity. By extending our banking and beyond banking services, MSMEs can be digitally transformed and be able to thrive in the new normal,” said UnionBank executive vice president and chief mass market and financial inclusion executive Manuel Santiago.

UnionBank has been developing a platform for MSMEs since 2018. The report says the idea involved working with companies to get online digital spaces started and get access to financing and manage cash flows.

The MSME Business Hub was created to be embedded in the business banking app, according to Santiago, giving the capacity to send requests and send payments through UnionBank online, allowing businesses to skip over the process of inputting bank details and total amounts, along with manually typing in the order description and sending it via the app to customers.

Santiago also said there were further plans coming to “provide additional channels from InstaPay for file transfers, eWallets such as GCash and GrabPay, credit and debit cards.”

PYMNTS previously reported that UnionBank was digitizing its onboarding process and allowing for more seamless banking transactions.

Read the report: UnionBank Debuts New Digital Onboarding Tech

The new solution will work through the Portal and offer services for things like bills payments, payroll, fund transfers, check writing services, merchant payment gateway systems, and credit facilities.

According to Ramon Duarte, head of UnionBank Transaction Banking, “everybody from individuals to business folks [are] becoming more and more comfortable in using technology today.”