Philippine Seven Corp. (PSC), the exclusive 7-Eleven licensee in the Philippines, is nearing full cashless coverage across its store network.

PSC President Richard Lee said 98% of stores nationwide now accept digital payments, according to BusinessWorld and Inquirer.net, speaking at a media briefing following the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on 16 July.

“We are working on it. Moving forward, we aim to increase our digital payment capability to 100%,” Lee said.

Cashless payment acceptance expanded from more than 1,000 stores at the end of 2025 to over 4,000 stores as of end-May 2026.

Customers can pay using credit and debit cards, QR Ph, e-wallets, and Google Pay, with Apple Pay support planned for the future.

Digital payments now account for about 7% of customer transactions and 12% of total sales, Lee said.

The rollout, which began in August 2025, initially relied on external partners and ran into reliability issues, according to Manila Times.

PSC Chairman Jose Victor Paterno said the company had expected the market to adopt a China-style model, where merchants scan a QR code presented by the customer, but the Philippine market evolved differently, in some cases requiring customers to generate a barcode at checkout instead.

“Both should work seamlessly,” Paterno said, referring to the fixes since made to the system.

A Broader Modernisation Push

The digital payment push is part of a broader modernisation drive at PSC, which posted record system-wide sales of PHP 99.4 billion in 2025, up 6.4% from PHP 93.5 billion the year before.

The company ended 2025 with 4,491 stores, up from 4,130 a year earlier, and remains on track to reach 5,000 stores by the end of 2026, backed by PHP 5 billion in capital expenditure earmarked to open 400 additional stores this year.

Of its total network, 53.42% are company-owned and 46.58% are franchised.

The rollout follows a leadership transition at PSC, with Lee moving from chief operating officer to president in July 2025, while Paterno stepped up to chairman.

“Our focus now is on execution, opening the right stores, deepening how we serve customers, and scaling the digital and payment capabilities we built this year,” Lee said. “That is how we will keep 7-Eleven the most convenient choice for Filipinos, wherever they are.”

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Philippines based on an image by A1 C09 via Pexels.