Every time a bank or e-wallet transaction in the Philippines trips a reporting threshold, it becomes a report filed with the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) — and those reports are now being read by artificial intelligence. The country's financial intelligence unit disclosed at a Senate budget hearing this week that it has integrated AI into its analysis of the millions of transaction reports it receives, a disclosure carried by Newsbytes.PH and The Manila Times on August 28.
What the AMLC's AI actually does
Banks, e-wallets, and other covered institutions file two kinds of reports with the AMLC: Covered Transaction Reports (CTRs), triggered automatically by transactions above set thresholds, and Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), flagged by the institutions themselves. The volume is enormous — far more than human analysts can read.
That is the gap the AI fills. According to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Eli Remolona Jr., who chairs the AMLC, the system identifies red flags within STRs and CTRs so investigators can prioritize which transactions deserve a closer look. AMLC Executive Director Matthew David told senators the agency has "procured the necessary equipment, technology, and integrate artificial intelligence in our processes."
The funding behind the upgrade was an additional allocation of about ₱162 million, which senators Panfilo Lacson and Sherwin Gatchalian helped secure. Lacson argued the technology push was overdue, since criminals are using increasingly sophisticated methods to move and hide funds.
The upgrade has been years in the making. As far back as November 2024, the AMLC was asking the Senate for funds for an AI project, with then finance committee chair Grace Poe noting that even with reporting thresholds, daily transaction reports numbered in the thousands — too many for manual review. That request was driven partly by the Bamban POGO case involving dismissed mayor Alice Guo: the AMLC opened proceedings against banks that handled transactions in the case, where violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act carry penalties of ₱250,000 to ₱500,000 per transaction, capped at ₱10-20 million.
Bank secrecy is still the wall
The AI can only read what the law lets the AMLC see, and that limit was the other half of this week's hearing. "We don't have the power, because of bank secrecy, to look into the bank accounts themselves. We only have STR and CTR," Remolona told senators, per The Manila Times.
In plain terms: the AMLC sees the reports about transactions, not the accounts behind them. Opening an account requires going through strict legal processes, including court-issued freeze orders. Regulators have been pushing to relax the Philippines' bank secrecy law — one of the strictest in the world — and that debate is now headed into the 2027 budget season.
What this means for your GCash, Maya, or bank transfers
For ordinary users, nothing changes in how you send money — the reporting happens between your provider and the regulator. What changes is the speed of detection on the other end. Faster triage of suspicious reports should help investigators spot mule accounts and scam proceeds sooner, which matters in a year when scam-hub raids and fraud enforcement have dominated local tech-policy news. It also fits a broader pattern of regulators leaning on technology, from the BSP's draft rule requiring National ID verification at banks and e-wallets to the platforms' own AI-driven onboarding.
The open question is the follow-on fight: whether Congress will lower bank-secrecy walls enough for the AMLC to act on what its new AI finds. Expect that argument to run through the budget debate — with privacy advocates and depositors watching just as closely as investigators.
