GCash

VIRTUAL REALITY

- TONY LOPEZ

Cash is a phenomenon. GCash is now the Philippines' largest money transfer service, the most popular Filipino finance app, the largest virtual bank and the biggest cashless ecosystem. GCash has become the ultimate financial inclusion tool benefitting adult Filipinos who have no bank account but have one or even two cellular phones. GCash has also gone into digital lending.

What the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has been trying to achieve in the past 30 years, GCash did in just three years - involve at least 80 percent of adult Filipinos to have a financial or bank account.

GCash's furious growth came after Martha Sazon became its president and CEO in June 2020 just as COVID was beginning to maraud across the archipelago with the worst epidemic of the century. The epidemic triggered an urgent need for contactless, cashless and retail digital financial services. GCash is now larger than most of the Philippines' 30 commercial banks, and will make them irrelevant soon.

Launched in 2004, GCash has had over 94 million adult users with total value of transactions hitting P1.5 trillion, up from just P500 million in March 2022. About 57 percent of users are women. Most users are middle or low income. GCash has become a habit, but not nefarious like smoking.

GCash is the first and only Philippine pentacorn. GCash valuation has hit $5 billion, more than double from its $2-billion value in 2023. The $5 billion was reached after Japan's largest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, acquired an eight percent stake for $393 million in early August 2024. Mynt also owns Fuse, a lending app.

The e-wallet enables users to make and collect payments, shop here and abroad (in more than 16 countries and territories) and avail themselves of services like credit, remittances and investments.