Philippine central bank rolls out Intraday Settlement Facility

The ISF is designed to support a paperless process.

The Philippines has officially rolled out a fully automated Intraday Settlement Facility (ISF) for financial institutions (FIs).

The facility will be made available to all eligible FIs that encounter timing mismatches when settling their transactions through the Peso Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Payment System operated by the BSP.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) first rolled out ISF on 27 June.

BSP linked its RTGS system (PhilPaSSplush) with BTr’s Enhanced National Registry of Scripless Securities to make ISF possible. 

The PhilPaSSplus is the Philippines’ only Peso RTGS system that enables settlement of large-value funds transfers between financial institutions. This system also settles the clearing results of retail payments made by individuals, businesses, and the government using checks, ATMs, InstaPay, and PESONet.  
 
Aside from preventing gridlocks in the PhilPaSSplus from timing mismatches in the settlement of payments between participants, the ISF is designed to support a paperless process.

This allows PhilPaSSplus participants to obtain funds within a few minutes after initiating a repurchase agreement or repo transaction with the BSP, according to the central bank.