BSP Draft Rule Mandates National ID Integration for Licensed VASPs, E-Wallets, and Banks

If a currently drafted BSP memorandum will push through, local crypto platforms, e-wallet providers, major banks, and digital banks in the Philippines have just 90 days to connect their customer onboarding pipelines directly to the government’s central identity database.

Under a draft memorandum from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), licensed Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP), Electronic Money Issuers (EMI), and retail banks must integrate with the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) National ID Authentication Services (NIDAS). The mandatory upgrade gives financial apps three months from the memorandum’s official issuance to submit complete onboarding applications to the PSA.

For users, the countdown marks a major shift in how local financial services verify identity, moving the industry away from manual physical ID uploads and toward real-time backend database checks.

What Changes for Digital Asset Users

Once these financial institutions complete their NIDAS integration, prospective customers will no longer need to present or upload photos of physical plastic ID cards or paper printouts to open accounts. (Read More: (August 2026) List of Digital Banks With High Interest Rates in the Philippines)

Instead, platforms will ping the government’s central registry via the National ID eVerify system. Successful biometric checks, such as facial recognition, and demographic data matching will automatically satisfy Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements for first-time account setup.

The BSP draft circular outlines two functional authentication levels for institutions:

• Tier 1 (Basic Online Authentication): Performs an automated backend token match, returning a simple “yes/no” identity confirmation.
• Tier 2 (Electronic KYC): Allows requesting financial institutions and the PSA to securely exchange pre-agreed demographic data fields for deeper customer due diligence.

If a customer does not hold a National ID, or if the NIDAS system experiences downtime, financial institutions may still fall back on alternative valid government IDs under a risk-based framework.

The Two-Phase Rollout Schedule

The central bank’s directive divides regulated institutions into two distinct waves, putting high-volume digital platforms on the fastest timeline:

Newly licensed crypto exchanges or fintech entities entering the Philippine market after the memorandum takes effect will face the same three- or six-month compliance window starting from their official BSP registration date.

Eliminating KYC Friction and Preventing Fraud

Connecting crypto exchanges and e-wallets directly to the government database is designed to tackle two persistent industry problems: high onboarding drop-off rates caused by tedious manual ID submissions, and identity fraud using counterfeit physical documents.

With over 90 million Filipinos, roughly 80% of the national population, registered under the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys), establishing a mandatory NIDAS pipeline establishes a single, verified baseline for identity across the local digital asset ecosystem.

“NIDAS enables BSIs to leverage the National ID for more accurate, secure, and efficient customer identification and verification, strengthening know-your-customer processes,” the central bank noted in a statement.

Institutions that fail to submit complete onboarding applications or resolve compliance delays within the required timeframe face potential supervisory enforcement actions from the BSP.

Sources: (1, 2, 3, 4)

This article is published on BitPinas: Local VASPs, E-Wallets, Banks Face 3-Month Deadline to Integrate Philippine National ID

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