GCash aims to sustain dominance

Globe Fintech Innovations. Inc (Mynt), the operator of mobile wallet giant GCash, intends to maintain its dominance in the local market this year after another breakthrough year as it looks to push through with plans to offer stock and cryptocurrency trading.

Mynt president and CEO Martha Sazon said key priorities for the company this year would be to become closer to its vision of finance for all.

“For us, this means disrupting traditional financial services by providing the unbanked segment of the country access to credit through game-changing products like GLoan and GGives where we've had really positive results and the momentum we see it building up,” Sazon said.

“We're also keen on expanding our investment products to cover cryptocurrency and quite possibly, stock trading,” she said.

GCash is coming from another banner year wherein it has reached positive fullyear EBITDA and achieved profitability three years ahead of its target.

The mobile wallet closed 2021 with 55 million registered users, 4.5 million merchants and social sellers, 290 GLife merchant partners and around 174,000 cash-in, cash-out agents.

“Sustaining our market leadership as the number one finance app in the Philippines, we are the gold standard in fintech in the country, and possibly in the region,” Sazon said.

“With 55 million placing their trust in GCash, we have almost doubled our registered users since the start of 2021. This means that 70 percent of adult Filipinos have GCash account,” she said.

GCash has also more than tripled its gross value transactions in 2021 as the platform sustained strong patronage among users.

Gross transactions handled by GCash reached P3.8 trillion last year, up 217 percent from the P1.2 trillion a year ago.

“Mynt hopefully will continue its dominance in fintech and e-wallet in 2022, continue to understand what the public needs in terms of financial services, and continue to roll out those use cases inside the app with very good customer experience of course,” Mynt chairman of the board and Globe Telecom Inc. president and CEO Ernest Cu said.

Last year, GCash introduced a new installment payment feature called GGives, as well as GLoan, a service that allows qualified users to borrow as much as 25,000, with repayment spread over 12 months.

“With the growing portfolio of relevant products, as far as GCash is concerned, we see that adoption will continue to grow among Filipinos. We see that the behavior formed during the lockdown are sustained even as the economy opens up,“Sazon said.

With its growing popularity and user base, GCash assured it is not letting up when it comes to security.

“Account security has always been very important for us in GCash because we constantly reinforce the safety and security of our platform through various initiatives,“Sazon said.

Sazon said GCash has a customer protect program where users would not be held liable for unauthorized transactions from their accounts.

“We also educate people about not lending or selling their GCash accounts because they will be criminally liable for that,“she said.

Mynt in November last year raised over $300 million in an investment round led by global investment giant Warburg Pincus and New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, as well as Bow Wave Capital, one of the company's existing investors.

The company said there are currently no plans to raise funds at this point, as it is still digesting the funds raised in the most recent fundraising round.