Finally, you don’t have to worry about that load disappearing

You won’t ever have to worry about your prepaid credits suddenly disappearing from your account because it’s expired.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has recently signed a joint memorandum stating that prepaid credits regardless of the amount will now have a lifespan of 1 year from the date of top-up. 

“With this circular, President Rodrigo Duterte hopes to give the public a gift this holiday season that everyone can truly benefit from in the coming years,” a statement from Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said.

The move is seen to help out small and medium-sized businesses, as well as consumers.

A large majority of mobile phone users in the Philippines don’t have a fixed line, and instead rely on prepaid cards that are periodically loaded with credits to be used in calls, text and for data. According to statistics, there are currently 130 million cellphone subscriptions in the Philippines as of December 2016. 

“DTI is confident that our Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) will be able to do business more easily thanks to this circular, whether by making calls or sending an SMS to their customers, or by accessing the internet to conduct e-commerce,” Lopez said, referring to Short Messaging Service.

The memorandum supersedes NTC’s Memorandum Circular No. 03-07-2009, or the Guidelines on Prepaid Loads, which set the expiry duration on the amount of credits loaded onto an account.

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