Digital Banking

Philippines Central Bank BSP Issues Digital Bank License to UNObank

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has granted the third digital bank license to Singapore headquartered fintech DigibankASIA, one of the primary incorporators of UNObank.

In the past few months, BSP has granted the other two licenses to state-owned Overseas Filipino Bank (OFBank) which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the LANDBANK in March and another to Tonik.

UNObank will be helmed by Manish Bhai as CEO, a career banker and tech entrepreneur. Co-founder Kalidas Ghose is a recognised fintech influencer who led the effort to build FE Credit in Vietnam from scratch and created VP Banks digital bank ecosystem. Meanwhile, Puneet Gupta, Co-founder and CTO is an acclaimed deep tech innovator known for building cutting edge digital products and platforms.

With UNObank, the founders aim to help bridge the financial inclusion gap in the Philippines and eventually Southeast and South Asia.

UNO means ‘one’ and sets the premise for a digital bank that offers one app and one card to enable anyone anywhere in the Philippines to save, borrow, transact, invest, and protect their finances easily, with speed and ease.

UNObank is being built on a robust technology stack that includes products and services including Mambu, Backbase, and AWS.

Manish Bhai

“The BSP’s vision and foresight to digitise the local banking industry is future-forward and apt, because ultimately it will help align the Philippines as a modern banking center for the region.

We are very grateful to the BSP and honoured by the trust placed in our team.”

said Manish Bhai, CEO of UNOBank.

Manish Bhai previously sat down with Fintech News together with his partners from Backbase, AWS and Mambu, to talk about how they worked together to build UNOBank from scratch, the full webinar can be viewed here