The future of money

You know you're old — like me — if you have more years behind you than ahead of you; if at some point in your life you flew in or out of the old Manila International Airport (since NAIA ‘Terminal 1 opened only in 1982); or if you knew what Traveler’s Checks (TCs) were, and maybe even used them.

- MARVIN TORT

Yes, I belong to that generation. And looking back now, I'm amazed at how much we've transitioned over the years: from using cash, mainly US dollars, and good-as-cash TCs, to credit and debit cards when traveling. Gone are the days when cash was king abroad.

Next year, that transition could become even more dramatic. Filipinos traveling across Southeast Asia may soon be able to pay for goods and services electronically, using mobile phones, QR codes, and Philippine e-wallets such as GCash and Maya, or mobile banking apps. These tools will allow payments in local currency, drawn from peso accounts, and settled in real time.

This shift could further reduce our reliance on cash abroad, and perhaps even dampen the use of credit and debit cards for overseas spending. With the implementation of Project Nexus, cross-border electronic payments within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) may soon become seamless and widespread.

The planned regional payment system will rely on country-specific QR codes, or Quick Response codes. These are two-dimensional matrix barcodes that appear as square patterns and can store a wide range of encoded data. QR codes are machine-readable, or scannable by smartphones, and are already in widespread use domestically for payments.

As of today, eight ASEAN member states already have national QR payment systems: the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

These systems are being integrated through the ASEAN Integrated QR Code Payment System initiative, aiming for full interoperability by 2026.

The goal is simple but ambitious: by next year, ASEAN travelers should be able to use their local e-wallets or bank apps to scan QR codes in any participating country, and pay in the local currency, debited from their local accounts or wallets, with real-time automatic currency conversion. No cash or card required.