BSP approves 2 more VC exchanges

MANILA, Philippines — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has given two companies the green light to operate virtual currency exchanges (VCEs), bringing to 13 the number of firms dealing with cryptocurrencies in the country.

Melchor Plabasan, officer-in-charge of the Technology Risk and Innovation Supervision Department at the BSP, said the central bank’s Monetary Board has approved the registration of Atomtrans Tech Corp. and Tokyo-based Telcoin Corp. as VC exchanges.

Atomtrans Tech Corp. International is a financial service provider founded in 2017 with a Philippine central bank license and is headquartered in Manila.

It successfully launched ATC Remittance, ATC Payment and ATC Digital Currency Exchange.

Atomtrans has also reached a strategic cooperation agreement with China UnionPay Electronic Payment Co., Ltd. and UnionBank of the Philippines. It is also exclusively representing the Philippine-China remittance products.

It has established offices and expanding the business in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan and Argentina, etc.

On the other hand, Japanese-owned Telcoin is working with mobile service providers and based on the Etherium blockchain to bring the technology closer to everyone.

The other VC exchanges are Bexpress, Coinville Phils., ABA Global Phils., Betur (Coins.ph), Rebittance, BloomSolutions, Virtual Currency Philippines, ETranss Remittance International, Fyntegrate, ZyBi Tech and Bitan MoneyTech Co. Ltd. Inc.

Latest data from the BSP showed the value of transactions involving virtual currencies almost doubled to $390.37 million last year from $189.18 million in 2017.

The BSP earlier cautioned banks and financial institutions in dealing with money service businesses particularly those involved in virtual currencies including bitcoins.

BSP Deputy Governor Chuchi Fonacier issued Memorandum 2019 – 021 reminding BSP supervised institutions to ensure the soundness and adequacy of risk management policies and practices when dealing with VCEs.

Cryptocurrency is a type of virtual currency that uses cryptography – a method of storing and transmitting data in unreadable form so that only the intended receivers can read and process it. Bitcoin is the first and most popular cryptocurrency to date, introduced in 2009.