The Philippine central bank (BSP) has proposed a pause on new payment system operator registrations for 12 months as part of an effort to strengthen payment safeguards and make merchant transactions easier to trace, BusinessWorld reported Monday.
The proposed suspension would allow the BSP to conduct a holistic review of its payment system operator taxonomy and licensing framework. Applications already submitted would remain under evaluation but could not be approved or rejected during the suspension.
The draft rules would place greater responsibility on BSP-supervised institutions to identify the merchant behind a transaction and the party entitled to its proceeds, while shared payment channels could only support multiple merchants if each payment has a unique identifier and can be independently monitored and reconciled.
The rules would also impose additional controls on higher-risk sectors, including gambling, regulated virtual asset service providers and money service businesses. Intermediaries would generally be restricted from adding further layers to merchant acquisition arrangements, while high-risk structures would face board approval and recurring compliance and independent reviews.
