EVEN before “PokémonGo” had yet to happen, I had thought of, well, a card that you could use to purchase everything. Everything. Think of it as something a kiss shy of a magic card emblazoned with the number of God’s bank account, a piece of plastic less bulky than a bottomless billfold.
You can also think of it as a credit card, albeit sans the credit. I would travel with it, buy shoes with it and, with what would seem to be a divine privilege, I would just have to swipe away to taste all luxuries in life without all the worries and fear in the world. But there is no such thing (awwww). The closest I have discovered is a system that allows you to use an automated teller machine (ATM) card like you have never used it before, if it means you can use it as you would a credit card.
The unprecedented technology is solb!, a brainchild by financial technology start-up iBayad Online Ventures Inc., which delves into the field of electronic-transaction management, mobile payments and e-commerce. solb! is the Philippines’s first Bancnet-approved, app-based mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) payment facilitating solution, which enables any merchant to accept bank ATM cards, credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards or any other type of card payment, anytime, anywhere.
“In the Philippines only big-time establishments and merchants accept card payments. Which is unfortunate because it is exclusive, so that medium- to micro-enterprises don’t have the necessities to accept card payment,” iBayad CEO Paulo Saycon said. “This is the reason that, in the Philippines, cash is still king.”
With the mission to accelerate the adoption and transformation of every consumer’s traditional spending behavior from cash-centric transactions to card and mobile payments as the standard payment format in the increasingly evolving information economy, iBayad connects people financially by transforming the way they pay. Thus solb!
The system is composed of a universal card reader (which accepts all ATM cards registered under Bancnet) and printer, together with a smart phone and a mobile app. Within three business days, payments are deposited into your own bank accounts. Each transaction can be e-mailed, printed or sent as an SMS.
You input the amount you used to purchase, you would swipe or insert the customer’s ATM card, you would hand over the reader to your customer to input his pin.
solb! was specifically designed and developed primarily for the benefit of microentrepreneurs and small and medium enterprise’s, with the purpose of empowering their businesses with technology, which will allow them to remain relevant and competitive in their respective industries. It aims to deliver beneficial financial services to the unbanked and underbanked sector of society, who remains unreached and unserved by traditional financial institutions.