PayMaya, GCash join fight vs online sex trade

BY HANNAH TORREGOZA

Police authorities have found an ally in two mobile financial services app in their fight against online sexual abuses and human trafficking of children and women.

PayMaya and GCash have vowed to help police intercept and report transactions that are suspicious.

Basilio Visaya, Jr., head of PayMaya Philippines’ legal and corporate team, said part of their platform’s commitment is to work with other financial services and institutions and government regulators in responding to reports of online sexual abuse and exploitations and human trafficking.

“Part of our efforts is to temporarily suspend at the onset any account reported to us or found by our in-house monitoring systems, investigate these accounts and when we find that these accounts are involved in trafficking, then we will immediately file a suspicious transaction report to our regulator which is the BSP (Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas),” Visaya said during the hearing conducted by the Senate women and children’s panel on online sexual abuse and exploitation cases or OSAEC on Tuesday.

Ceferina Sison, chief legal counsel for GCash, said they strongly abhor the use of GCash and the use of their platform for criminal transactions and are committed to proactively detect any activity “that is related to or analogous to prostitution or child pornography.”

GCash, she said, has also activated its anti-money laundering monitoring group to monitor, review and report transactions that deviate from the usual protocols of their financial service app. (Hannah Torregoza)