PayMaya eyes P1.4T worth of transactions by December

PayMaya Philippines expects to process P1.4 trillion worth of transactions by December this year, exceeding its P1 trillion target two years ahead of schedule.

PayMaya said it is targeting and is on track to more than double this year the P700 billion worth of transactions it processed in 2020.

“Our first quarter points to that already, so we will exceed P1 trillion in gross transaction volume this year,” PayMaya founder and CEO Orlando Vea said.

PayMaya’s previous goal was to reach P1 trillion in transaction volume by 2023, but the goal seems attainable this year due to the sharp increase in the adoption of digital financial services.

“This payments business has two sides to it – the consumer side and the merchant side. The consumers need a wallet to be able to pay digitally. Merchants need a platform to process the payments of whatever digital payments paid to them. We’re both on the consumer wallet side and the enterprise side. We position ourselves as the only end-to-end enabler of digital transformation in Philippine payments,” Vea said.

PayMaya now counts 35 million registered users, about a third of the Philippine population.

It has over 200,000 touchpoints nationwide, consisting of 39,000 Smart Padala agents and 165,000 merchant locations.

“We have barely scratched the surface. There’s still 60 percent of Filipinos who are unbanked and that is not only about payments, but also about lending, savings, insurance and all financial services. So there’s a big opportunity in the Philippines,” Vea said.

PLDT’s Voyager Innovations Inc., which operates PayMaya, is expected to break even by 2023, and become profitable by 2024.

“Profitability maybe by 2024, maybe earlier if they accomplish more than a trillion of gross transaction value on both sides, merchants and consumer side, then it brings them closer to positive EBITDA by 2023 or even earlier. So it depends on the volume,” PLDT chairman, president and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan earlier said PayMaya had a very good 2020, but needs to perform better this year and has some catching up to do with its rival GCash.

Pangilinan said Voyager’s focus at present stays on the local market, noting that “there’s no assumption that it will go out outside the Philippines at this stage.”

“Our plans for this year, which are already ongoing, is to grow both sides of the business, the consumer and the enterprise. We’re on our way to creating a balanced high growth, as well as a viable unit economics. That’s what we’re doing in 2021 so that by 2023, we should achieve a cash positive level already,” Vea said.