RURAL banking has always been a critical sector in the financial service industry. Banks in the countryside help promote and expand the rural economy and provide essential financial services to rural communities unserved or underserved by commercial banks. They cater to the retail sector and the unbanked or those unreached by banks and similar financial institutions.

In its 2019 Financial Inclusion Survey, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas noted that about 71 percent of the entire adult population was unbanked. But when the pandemic hit, there was a big jump in account ownership due to the digitization of financial transactions. Leveraging this trend, the report stated that the Central Bank aims to get at least 70 percent of the adult population to possess bank accounts by 2023.