[Finterest] How your e-wallet history could help you get a cheaper loan

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A strong open finance framework could give Filipinos more control over their financial data, help more people access formal financial services, and give lenders a fuller picture of borrowers, potentially bringing down loan costs

MANILA, Philippines – Millions of Filipinos now use e-wallets to pay electricity and internet bills, buy groceries, send money, and receive payments from customers or freelance clients. But much of that financial history may count for little when they apply for a loan – simply because it never appears in traditional bank or credit records.

This is one problem that open finance is supposed to solve.

Filipinos already leave a long digital trail showing how they earn, spend, save, and pay. But that information is often scattered across banks, e-wallets, insurers, investment platforms, and other financial companies that do not necessarily speak the same digital language.

Banks and lenders already have ways to share conventional credit information, such as records of existing loans and repayment behavior. But there’s still no simple and standardized system allowing you to securely bring a broader set of financial records from one provider to another.

What’s open finance?

Open finance is basically a permission system that allows financial companies to share your data securely when you ask them to.

Instead of downloading screenshots, printing statements, or surrendering your password, a bank or e-wallet could send selected information through an application programming interface (API). The API is the secure digital connector that allows two systems to exchange information in a standard format.

Open finance doesn’t automatically mean every lender gets free access to everything you do. You should be able to decide what information is shared, with whom, and for what purpose, then withdraw that consent later.

It’s also a broader concept than “open banking,” which generally focuses on bank accounts. Open finance can encompass e-money, investments, pensions, insurance, and other financial products. In other words, open finance leans more into financial inclusivity, especially for the underbanked.

This matters especially as more Filipino transactions move online. Digital payments accounted for 57.4% of retail payment transactions by volume in 2024, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). But the records created by all that activity may not always follow consumers when they approach another financial company.

How this affects your loan

Open finance could give more Filipinos a fairer chance to enter and gain access to credit from the formal financial system. Traditional credit checks tend to favor people with regular salaries, bank accounts, credit cards, and long borrowing histories, leaving out those whose financial lives happen mostly through digital platforms.

A freelancer may not receive the same income every month, but regular payments, stable cash flow, and years of bills paid on time evidenced on e-wallets could still show that they manage money responsibly, possibly reducing their interest rates for credit.

It could also make it easier to shop around. Rather than starting from zero with every new provider, consumers could bring their financial history to another lender, insurer, or investment platform. This could encourage companies to compete for customers who were previously difficult to assess.

The BSP has already begun testing the concept. Under an open finance pilot for Personal Equity and Retirement Accounts (PERA), verified customers can authorize a bank or e-wallet to send existing information to a PERA administrator, reducing the need to repeatedly submit the same records.

That may sound quite different from the cheaper loans we talked about, but it demonstrates the basic use case that your information should be able to move with you when you authorize it.

Are there any laws pushing for this?

The Open Finance and Consumer Data Empowerment Act of 2025, seeks to give consumers greater control over these records and provide a clearer legal foundation for the BSP’s open finance framework.

The bill declares that consumers have a right to control the use and sharing of their financial data. Under the proposal, consumers would be allowed to obtain their information in a portable, structured, and machine-readable format for free at least once every calendar quarter.

They could instruct a company holding their records to securely transfer a copy to a BSP-accredited recipient. They could also revoke consent at any time and request the correction of inaccurate information.

Consumers may request deletion where applicable, although companies would still be allowed to retain records when required by banking, tax, anti-money laundering, and other laws.

Financial companies covered by the framework would have to develop secure APIs. They would also need to provide digital dashboards where consumers can manage their permissions and see which accredited companies have accessed their data.

As of July 2026, however, the measure was still pending in the House committee on banks and financial intermediaries. It must still pass both chambers of Congress and be signed into law before these rights become enforceable. – Rappler.com

Finterest is Rappler’s series that demystifies the world of money and gives practical advice on managing your personal finances.