PhilPaSS Plus is the sole Real-Time Gross Settlement system for Philippine Peso transactions, owned and operated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The system serves as the backbone of the Philippine payment infrastructure, settling large-value interbank transfers and the net obligations from the country's retail payment systems, InstaPay and PESONet.
The system traces its origins to the original Philippine Payment and Settlement System, which the BSP upgraded to PhilPaSS Plus in July 2021 with the migration to ISO 20022 messaging standards. This upgrade brought enhanced straight-through processing capabilities and richer payment data to the Philippine settlement landscape.
In calendar year 2025, PhilPaSS Plus processed 1,728,044 transactions worth PHP 601.3 trillion, representing a nine percent increase in volume over the previous year. On an average business day, the system handles approximately 6,900 transactions settling roughly PHP 2.4 trillion. The third quarter of 2025 alone saw 459,818 transactions totaling PHP 151.3 trillion, with transaction values climbing 21 percent year-over-year, driven primarily by a 19.3 percent rise in large-value intra-account transfers.
Large-value transactions dominate system activity, accounting for 84.8 percent of total PhilPaSS Plus throughput. The system also settles retail payment obligations, with automated clearing house volumes growing at a particularly rapid 29.7 percent clip in the third quarter of 2025.
PhilPaSS Plus currently operates Monday through Friday from 09:00 to 17:45 Philippine time, serving 236 participating institutions. These include commercial banks, thrift banks, rural and cooperative banks, non-bank financial institutions with quasi-banking functions, electronic money issuers, government agencies, and financial market infrastructures. The BSP onboarded its first non-bank participant, OmniPay, in early 2024, signaling a gradual broadening of direct settlement access.
The participant landscape reflects the Philippine banking system's structure, with universal and commercial banks generating the overwhelming majority of settlement activity while smaller institutions increasingly gain access to real-time settlement capabilities.
Looking ahead, the BSP has announced plans to extend PhilPaSS Plus operations to 24 hours, seven days a week, with implementation targeted for 2026. BSP Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan has cited the need for continuous settlement to support the country's growing instant payment ecosystem, where InstaPay processes real-time credit transfers around the clock up to PHP 50,000 per transaction, and PESONet handles same-day batch settlements.
The move toward round-the-clock RTGS operations would align the Philippines with a small but growing group of central banks that have extended settlement beyond traditional business hours, including the Reserve Bank of India, which made its RTGS system available around the clock in December 2020, and Bank Negara Malaysia, which launched 24/7 settlement through RENTAS Plus in October 2025. BSP Circular 1223 further mandates that InstaPay and PESONet participants migrate to ISO 20022 within two years, deepening the standardization of Philippine payment messaging across the entire national payments stack.