BEXPRESS was awarded the full license to operate as a Virtual Currency Exchange by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on September 6, 2020.
The awarding of the full license further demonstrates the company’s commitment to offer financial services consistent with the laws and regulations. It also enables Bexpress to enhance the trust of its customers, credibility and legitimacy to the commercial partners, and gives validation and certainty to its investors. Effectively, BSP registration optimizes business opportunities and consequently improves the services.
Because of BSP registration, Bexpress enjoys the guidance of the BSP as principal regulator on how, as a financial institution, should conduct business. The BSP rules that Bexpress is bound to observe and reflect the best practices in financial services. Such guidance is extremely important to Bexpress at this time; so that from a startup phase, they can scale up the business and build it as a trusted institution. In this regard, the company views BSP as a partner in the governance of the company.
Growth amidst uncertainty
It has been quite the journey indeed for Bexpress – from incorporation in September 2016 to the beta phase of its platform (BEXPRESS.PH), to the public launch of the app (Bexpress Pro), and everything else in between.
Bexpress was established as it strongly believes in the potential of the Philippine market. Bexpress CEO Brian Kang remarked, “There is a good market here. With Filipinos leading in overseas remittances, I’d like to give them the convenience and opportunity to grow their money using technology.”
OFW remittances were at $29.7B in 2016 and have steadily risen to $33.46B in 2019.
In just a short period, the company continuously grew its user base with clients not just from the Philippines but from South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. The pandemic did not negatively affect the business as there has been an increase in remittance transactions through cryptocurrencies and a lot more Filipinos are gaining more interest in cryptocurrency trading. Operations were also unhampered as company was able to consistently provide quality service 24/7 to its clients. We even invested a lot in HSM technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and an off-site data backup recovery site to ensure the security of its clients’ funds and personal data.
Looking forward to 2021
Bexpress is looking forward to an exciting 2021. By next year, the Bexpress expect that digital assets will gain more traction, both in terms of consumer and institutional adoption.
The company also expects that the underlying technology behind most digital assets, blockchain, will become more developed. In fact, the company is expecting”blockchain payment” system will start in the first quarter of 2021. The maturation of blockchain will enable more applications to be rolled out, and can already expect a Cambrian explosion of innovation in the area of financial technology by 2021 and beyond. With the emergence of new technologies – most of them are open-source software and protocols, clients and partners can look forward to new financial products and services that leverage blockchain and digital assets.