The Quezon City government has teamed up with United States Agency for International Development on a project that will allow residents to pay for transactions through their mobile phones.
According to the U.S. Embassy, Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista and USAID mission director Gloria Steele signed an agreement Monday to include QC as a pilot area for the Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money (Simm) project.
The Simm program will “will assist government agencies in enabling mobile money for payroll disbursement, distribution of social welfare stipends, and collection of fees for government services including utility services, real property taxes, business permits, and other local government fees,” the embassy said.
“We support the Quezon City Government in its aim to provide citizens a secure, transparent and convenient way to settle government fees and improve social welfare coverage through the use of mobile money technology,” Steele said.
Proponents of mobile money, like USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, see it as a means of extending financial services in developing countries where many do not have bank accounts.
