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Regulated crypto firm Coins.ph debuts Philippine stablecoin in sandbox – Ledger Insights
Last week Coins.ph said it has begun testing its Philippine peso stablecoin, PHPC, as part of a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) sandbox. He started testing the stable coin in April, which will likely continue until June. At that point, it hopes to open it up for wider use, but this will be subject to central bank assessment. The stablecoin is collateralized by cash and cash equivalents held in Philippine banks.
It says the tests will involve “real-world applications”. Given the Filipino diaspora of around 12 million, cross-border remittances are the most obvious. It will also target domestic payments, although it will compete with the fastest 24/7 payment system, InstaPay, which has a transaction limit equivalent to US$865. Most other use cases are focused on cryptography, such as trading, hedging when there is market volatility, and using stablecoin as collateral for DeFi applications.
“While PHPC presents a variety of potential applications in commerce and payments, we anticipate that remittances will be an important use case for Filipinos as PHPC will not only reduce costs; This also means that peso transactions can now happen 24/7 and in real time,” said CEO Wei Zhou, according to GMA News.
Coins.ph is now active in remittances. In 2019 he signed a deal with Western Union which allowed offshore workers to optionally remit payments directly to the Coins.ph wallet.
With 7 million active wallet users, Coins.ph already holds licenses as an electronic money company and virtual currency service provider in the Philippines. More recently, it has acquired licenses in several other jurisdictions.