72% of Pinoys turn to pawnshops to pay bills or send money, says Central Bank survey

ABS-CBNNews.com-citing a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) survey-reports that "72 percent of Filipinos have gone to a pawnshop in the last 12 months to pay their bills and send or receive remittances."

The report quoted BSP Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla, who said that pawnshops have turned into a "major financial service provider" in the country. This is because, as Espenilla pointed out, "pawnshops can be found in rural areas, while banks can be hard to find in some municipalities." In fact, the BSP survey noted that 610 out of the 1,634 municipalities in the Philippines don’t have a bank.

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