Gamble grumble

After all the hemming and hawing about what to do with online gambling from our spineless politicians, the Bangko Sentral ng Philippines (BSP) has finally stepped in and taken matters with its own regulatory hands.

In its publicized directive, the BSP ordered payment alternatives GCash and Paymaya to delink their apps from gambling sites. Quite meekly, these alternative banking providers have undertaken to comply. As they should --the insane popularity of online gambling has everyone grumbling.

What to do? In barely a year, ordinary Filipinos who depend on their mobile phones to pay this and that were suddenly given seamless and quite user-friendly access to gambling. Combine the fun of playing, and the thrill of possibly cashing in on an instant prize (all the while ensconced comfortably in the privacy of one’s own couch), and we had a recipe for addiction --and disaster.

Security guards, carpenters, daily-rate workers, and yes, even hoity-toity gallery managers have ended up in debt, or worse, stealing from family and friends, just so they can place the next bet. Alas, they end up in an even more precarious situation from where they were originally, before they got quite hooked.

But these app developers and their rapacious financiers have quite deep pockets --quite enough to lobby strenuously amongst our greedy politicians. Hence, despite the swell of public opinion against the suddenly ubiquitous gambling sites, legislators have dragged their expensively-shod cloven feet.

Thank goodness for the BSP. While dedicated gamblers can still gamble, at least until Congress discovers it has a conscience, ordinary Filipinos won’t find it quite as easy to finance their dirty habit.

And while the BSP is at it, perhaps, it’d like to look into the practice of some business establishments of avoiding cash altogether. Yes, joints trying to be cool have decreed that cash is out of the question. In their establishments, only electronic payments are accepted.

Sort of what the toll operators of our expressways tried to do at one point (perhaps, even until now.) Those industries tried to mandate the use of their RFID system, which is basically their own digital wallet, to enter their smooth roads, and have announced multiple times they will not accept cash.

From what I remember though, our currency is legal tender, and hence, cannot be refused as a means of payment. To turn up one’s nose at cold, hard cash and insist on being paid through an app, or with crypto, or in diamonds, is a no-no. Such a no-no, that it might even be a crime (check out the New Central Bank Act --it’s got lovely provisions there like five years of imprisonment for those pushing currency substitutes).

Which is great, because that allows dinosaurs like me to refuse parking my money in these pesky payment apps. New York already has legal safeguards in place against this exclusionary mindset. Cashless establishments are prohibited. The thinking is, to accept only cards or apps is anti-poor. Low-income, elderly, and those without banks should have access to essential goods and services.

Bangkok, on the other hand, has seen the proliferation of establishments that refuse cash - like that most prosaic of retail stores, Starbucks. Which is probably fine, as there is better (and cheaper) coffee to be found in Thailand, anyway.

The BSP should make it clear that here, in its turf, its legal tender is not be ditched. Just because the payments apps have become behemoths doesn’t mean that those outside their ecosystem are to be marginalized (consider this pro-active activism from a non-client with maybe a little paranoia mixed in).

And just to further muddle the discussion, perhaps the BSP can likewise mandate the payment of interest by GCash and Paymaya to its clients. That might make life for their executives more interesting. No axe to grind, promise. My knives are just sharp.

An idle mind. What trouble it can sometimes lead to.