You pay your bills on time every month: electricity, telco, water, internet, the works. But the moment you walk into a bank to apply for a loan, it’s like none of that ever happened. No credit card history, no payslip, no collateral. Rejected. Here’s the frustrating truth: the proof that you’re a responsible payer already exists. It’s sitting in your e-wallet history, your utility records, and your subscription accounts. Banks just aren’t looking at it, and right now, they’re not required to.

A bill recently filed in Congress wants you to take charge of your data and effectively use your data-rich payment history to give you greater access to financial tools and services. Here’s what you need to know about the Open Finance and Consumer Data Empowerment Act of 2025.

Why can’t you get a loan even if you pay everything on time?

Because the formal lending system was built for a different kind of Filipino: one with a bank account, a credit card, and a payslip. If your financial life runs through an e-wallet or a payment counter, you’re essentially invisible to lenders. Experts call this being “credit invisible.” You have a financial history. It just doesn’t exist anywhere a lender can read it.

What does this bill actually do?

The Open Finance and Consumer Data Empowerment Act of 2025 gives you the legal right to authorize the transfer of your own financial data from bill payments, e-wallet transactions, subscription activity, and even rewards card usage, to accredited lenders for credit evaluation. In plain terms, you tell your provider to send your payment history to a lender of your choice, and they are legally required to do it. Your track record finally follows you into a financial institution.

What kind of data are we talking about?

More than you’d expect. Under the bill, lenders could evaluate you based on up to 24 months of electricity payments, water bills, internet subscriptions, GCash and Maya transaction history, and even rewards card activity. For a sari-sari store owner, a freelancer, or a delivery rider who hasn’t missed a payment in years, that’s a mountain of proof of creditworthiness that’s currently sitting unused.

Who makes sure nobody abuses this?

The bill proposes creating a Consumer Data Commission. It will be the country’s first regulatory body built specifically to govern how financial and transactional data is shared and used. Designed for the digital economy, it will be mandated to govern an ecosystem where your digital financial behavior will paint a full picture of your financial life to ensure that you have access to formal financial tools and services.

It would be led by senior officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), with representation from the National Privacy Commission (NPC), the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), and the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC), alongside private sector experts in banking and data protection.

Is your data safe?

Nobody can access your data without your explicit consent. The bill guarantees four enforceable rights: the right to informed consent before any data is shared, the right to access your own data for free in a readable format, the right to port your data to an accredited lender of your choosing, and the right to have your data deleted upon request.

Anyone who misuses your data without authorization faces a minimum of three years in prison and a fine of no less than P500,000.

Who benefits the most?

The 44% of Filipino adults who are still unbanked, according to the BSP’s own data, even as 58 million of them already use e-wallets and digital payments, now account for 57.4% of all retail transactions in the country. We’re talking market vendors, security guards, online sellers, freelancers, and delivery riders. These are people who have been doing everything right in a system that was never built to notice.

Beyond expanding access, this bill also has the potential to lower the cost of credit for millions of Filipinos. This matters because the cost of being unseen is high: many Filipinos today pay effective interest rates approaching 100% a year, and often much more, not necessarily because they are riskier borrowers, but because lenders lack the information needed to assess them accurately. Better data helps close that gap, allowing people with strong financial behavior to finally be recognized and rewarded.

What’s the catch?

The data transfer only happens if you authorize it. Lenders cannot pull your records without your go signal. And any entity that wants to receive your data has to be accredited by the commission first, meeting strict technical, financial, and governance standards.

What now?

The bill has just been filed. Whether it becomes law depends on what happens next in Congress. But the problem it is trying to solve, which involves millions of Filipinos locked out of formal credit despite years of responsible financial behavior, isn’t going anywhere. And now, at least, it has a name.

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