The U.S. Government and the Local Government of Quezon City launched a new partnership that will implement the use of electronic payments for government services.

U.S. Embassy Manila’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director, Gloria D. Steele, and Quezon City Mayor Herbert M. Bautista, signed a memorandum of understanding on the selection of Quezon City as one of the pilot areas of the Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money (SIMM) project on March 25 at the Bulwagang Amoranto of the Quezon City Hall.

Through SIMM, USAID 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.

“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,” Director Steele said in her remarks.

The SIMM project is aligned with the Philippine Government’s thrust of promoting financial inclusion by expanding citizen’s access to formal financial services and improving accountability and security in government transactions through digitization of payment and collection systems.

U.S. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, Jr. said in a message, “This partnership supports the mutual goal of our governments to promote broad-based and inclusive growth in the country under the U.S.-Philippines Partnership for Growth initiative.”

Launched in November 2011 by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, the Partnership for Growth provides a new framework for deepening and strengthening bilateral engagement between the Philippines and the United States in order to promote a higher, sustained and more inclusive economic growth trajectory, in line with other high-performing emerging economies.

The Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money Project is working with various national and local government agencies and the private sector to build and strengthen the local components of mobile money ecosystems in select pilot areas to accelerate adoption and usage of mobile money as a development tool for financial inclusion and good governance.