The national government, spearheaded by the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Land Bank of the Philippines (LANDBANK), announced this week the launched the Overseas Filipino Bank (OFBank) as a digital-only bank that allows clients to complete bank transactions anytime and anywhere across the globe.
The newly launched bank is a fully-owned subsidiary of LandBank. In a media statement, they said that the digital bank utilises “Digital Onboarding System with Artificial Intelligence” to facilitate digital account opening via the OFBank’s mobile banking app. They said this will in turn allow overseas Filipinos to securely and conveniently submit all requirements online to open an account.
To open an account the applicant will only need to take a “selfie” and the system will compare this photo with the photo in the valid identification (ID) card uploaded by the client.
There are three types of accounts available: the OFBank Visa Debit Card for overseas Filipinos, the OFBank Visa Debit Card for beneficiaries, and the OFBank Debit Card for beneficiaries below 18 years old.
These are interest-bearing peso savings accounts with no minimum initial deposit and monthly average daily balance (ADB), as well as dormancy fee. To earn interest, the accounts need to have a daily balance of P500.00. (US$10)
The OFBank Visa Debit Card allows cardholders, specifically the beneficiaries of OFs and OFWs, to receive secure and convenient real-time fund transfers using Visa Direct, Visa’s real time payment solution through the 16-digit card number.
“As the OFBank becomes fully digital, we aim to better serve the banking and financing requirements of our kababayans abroad, as well as their families here in our country. Rest assured that OFBank will continuously work on providing safe, reliable and secure digital banking,”
OFBank President and CEO Martin said.
“We’re extremely pleased to join our valued partner, OFBank in this launch to support OFWs, OFs and their beneficiaries. The reintroduction of OFBank as a digital-only, branchless Philippine bank is extremely timely when Filipinos are becoming more digital, and our research also shows that close to 80% of Filipinos are interested to use services from a digi-bank. We are glad to show our support to this community by enabling beneficiaries of OFWs and OFs to receive money in real-time by seamlessly and securely using the 16-digit OFBank Visa debit card, which they can also use to make face-to-face and online payments wherever Visa is accepted.”
said Dan Wolbert, Visa Country Manager for the Philippines and Guam.
