As of July 1, bank transfers will be made with the telephone number

Banks want to further spread the use of digital wallets and for that, they will give users more options. In this interview, the representative of the Banks Association announces interoperability between wallets of Yape and Plin, They are from different banks. Payments will also be made from a telephone number.

– It was announced that 50% of citizens in Peru are in the financial system. What expectations do you have for this percentage to grow and what measures do you foresee for financial inclusion?

We see a huge opportunity in digitization. There are already 17 million digital wallets in the country and that is a success story at the regional level, only surpassed by Brazil. If we take into account that we have a population of 33 million inhabitants, 17 million wallets means that for every two inhabitants there is one who has a wallet.

– Are you referring to Yape, Plin?

That’s how it is. People have already been incorporated into daily life, to pay for a taxi, to buy in the market. This implies that behind a digital wallet there is a financial entity, which now has visibility of the user who can now be financially included, accessing credits. The wallets are already giving microcredits of 200, 500 soles (…) For example, a seller in a supply market who now, by using a digital wallet in her daily transactions, has visibility of how much money she handles in a month. That is an element of judgment for the financial institution of whether you can access a loan. (…)

– Will it continue to be the means to capture the other 50%?

It is one of the strategies. As of April 1st, the wallets will be interoperable. Before there was a problem: if you had a Yape wallet and I had a Plin wallet, I couldn’t pass money to you or you to me. From April 1 they will be interoperable, which means that from Yape you will be able to transfer money to Plin and vice versa.

– Is it already regulated?

If he Central Reserve Bank It released the regulation last year, setting the guidelines and deadlines for interoperability to take place. The first milestone is April 1st. And the second milestone will be on July 1, since interoperability will be greater, it will not only be between the wallets themselves, but with all financial entities.

– What does it mean?

That you are going to have your money in your Yape wallet and you will transfer it to a Credit Bank or of BBVA. In the same way, from those accounts they will transfer you to your wallet only using a telephone number. Because now if you want to make a credit to a bank account you have to know a huge number and you can be wrong. As of July 1 you can do it directly with a phone number.

– Is a user going to have to give their phone number or is it the default?

Default. Imagine that you do not have an account in any bank. You just download the wallet application on your phone and that’s it. You have not done the process of taking out the account, only by having the wallet you have already created a digital account. Without knowing it, you already have an account and are included in the financial sector. Then you start trading. And later when you want to make any transfer, you just have to have the phone number.

– And this is going to be zero cost?

Yes, zero cost for what is the use of the wallets. If the wallet gives you a credit, that does have a cost. But the advantage is that since the financial institution has more visibility of the management of the money you have, then the credit it gives you is already more secure. Therefore, the interest rate can be lower, many times they are high when the person does not yet have an account.

– What is the amount of money that moves through digital wallets?

They are several million. The average (transfer) amount has been rising. The amount of each transaction was 50 to 60 soles and it went up around 80 to 100 soles.

– And where is the other 50% that still cannot be included in the financial system?

On the one hand there is mistrust about how it will be. There is also self-exclusion, they say: I am very small, the bank will not accept me, I will not qualify for a loan. And on the other hand, the difficulty for financial institutions to reach customers in remote areas. Others think that since the bank will know how much they move and if they are informal, then the Sunat will enter.

There is also a fear on that side. However, they are different things. There is bank secrecy, as a bank I cannot disclose the operations that I do with you. We need to instill more trust in the people and that is through education. At the beginning of last year we did a study and we saw that we were all pulled off in financial education. That’s why last year we decided to go fully into financial education, we have two programs: one aimed at school kids, we started with cajamarca and Arequipa. Last year, more than 40,000 boys from secondary schools in these two regions have been trained. This year will include Lime. For those of us who have already finished school, we have a program called Finance at the Touch through the web (finanzasaltoque.pe) and there you have free access to four totally digital courses, of very good quality, easy to understand and apply to your daily life. They are aimed at entrepreneurs, merchants, heads of households and young people who have just joined civic life.

– How much has delinquency grown?

It has gone from 2% pre-pandemic to levels close to 3%. It is a significant increase, but it has remained at those levels. To give an idea, 3% means that of every 100 credits that are given, there are 3 that are not paid. It is a small percentage, we have a solid system with credits that are given responsibly (…).

– Regarding the interest rate, is it possible that it rises even more?

It is already reaching its maximum levels. It is not a phenomenon that only occurred in the country, it is worldwide. It is the product of the pandemic, of logistics restrictions, of wars, of all these situations that have caused the prices of basic supplies to rise internationally and that has a correlate in rising prices, of everything.
So inflation. And it happens that when inflation rises, interest rates also rise because they are government policies to curb it. That has an impact on commercial banks.

– And the fact that it has been uploaded has caused people to ask for credits?
There are people who have stopped taking some credits that are more expensive now. There are other people who do not take the credits because they are seeing how the situation in the country is going.

– Could the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley in the United States and other banks in Europe, in Switzerland, have repercussions in Peru?

No, none. In the case of Peruvian banks and the Peruvian financial system, there is no direct relationship with the banks you have mentioned. And in North American banks and in those where this has happened, there have been specific cases of what is called a run on money.

– Is the Peruvian financial system safe?
It is one of the strongest in the region. It is very solid, it has a fairly good supply level, because it is also managed responsibly.