Philippines toolkit will allow digitization, ID verification across local, national govt

UBX, an open finance subsidiary of Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), has launched UrGovPH, a suite of open finance solutions that will allow local governments to easily create digital services across identity, finance, property and business interaction, according to a release by Aboitiz Group.

UBX is wholly owned by the conglomerate Aboitiz Group, which is a significant shareholder of UnionBank (49 percent), alongside the state-owned Social Security System (19 percent) – the social insurance scheme.

The UrGovPH suite will empower what are known as local government units (LGUs) as well as national agencies to digitize public services and verify businesses and individuals.

The suite will allow automation of workflow operations for the management of all social services from civil registry to business registration and acceptance of digital payments, per the release. Via i2i, the banking-as-a-service platform from UBX, digital transactions with local governments are enabled as is the automation of taxation.

LGUs will have access to government agencies and UBX’s private partnerships through the suite of products.

More aspects of life will be covered and customer interaction and relations are set to improve. LGUs will use blockchain-based systems to list real property, business assets, and environmental assets, combined with location mapping.

Via SeekCap, another part of the suite, businesses will have easier access to verified lenders and entrepreneurs can find partner lenders. Citizen verification will also be automated, including liveness checks and pre-filling data from government IDs or databases connected to the system.

“As a critical government partner, UBX’s UrGovPH aids the new administration in ushering the Philippines to a new digital era,” comments John Januszczak, president of UBX. “With open finance solutions powering e-governance, we believe that we will be on track to meeting our shared goal of including 70 percent of Filipino adults in the country’s financial systems.”

The development fits in with the Philippines’ ongoing mission to digitize the economy and society, including its digital ID scheme, PhilID based on the MOSIP open-source platform. Printing delays for the PhilID could result in the credential going digital.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (also known as Bongbong Marcos) has called for a unified approach to progressing digital services and providing good and solid data for informed decision-making. Marcos called for the digitization of government archives and the PhilID system to speed up.

“As a techglomerate, we also want to do our best to help tech-up our country,” comments Sabin Aboitiz, president and CEO of the Aboitiz Group.

According to the executive, the technology must be used to improve several aspects of government, society, public systems, industries, and institutions.

The company “aims to be the public’s Partner of Choice when it comes to modernizing and digitizing everything in order to develop our economy faster and better, and uplift the lives of as many Filipinos as possible.”

Article Topics

civil registry  |  digital economy  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  government services  |  identity verification  |  KYB  |  KYC  |  Philippines  |  UBX