Skyro has posted its first-ever half-year operating profit in the Philippines, just over three years after launching in the country in 2022.

The digital consumer finance group’s credit portfolio has grown almost eightfold since the end of 2023, while revenue has tripled year-over-year since launch.

The company disbursed nearly US$180 million in loans in the first half of 2026 alone, 1.9 times the amount disbursed a year earlier.

The Skyro app’s user base grew to more than 7 million users, and by the end of the second quarter, the platform had processed 2 million total product loan transactions through its point-of-sale infrastructure since inception.

Skyro’s lending products are now offered through more than 3,000 merchants and around 10,000 retail locations, with its online merchant network expanding more than fivefold in 2025.

“In 2022, the Philippines became a magnet for fintech start-ups from around the world due to the clear gap between demand for accessible credit and its supply,” said Arsen Liametov, Co-Founder of Skyro.

He said the company positioned itself between traditional banks, which serve mainly affluent borrowers, and payday lenders charging annualised rates of up to 400%, building its model from the outset to scale beyond a single country.

Skyro uses AI-based alternative credit-scoring methods to assess borrowers who lack a formal credit history, drawing on factors such as online purchase history, smartphone usage data, and in-app behaviour.

The approach builds a fuller picture of a borrower’s creditworthiness, filling gaps that conventional credit-scoring models often miss.

“Reaching operational break-even is an important milestone for Skyro,” Liametov said, adding that it lets the company fund capital-intensive products like SkyroCredit, plan complementary offerings such as investment technology and SME lending, and expand into new markets.

Applying the Philippine Model to the GCC

Skyro is now applying the same approach beyond the Philippines after the break-even announcement, expanding into the GCC and South-East Asia.

The company is already active in the region through Skyro UAE, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Fasset to develop stablecoin-based cross-border remittance solutions, and a separate agreement with Bahrain-based investment firm SICO to expand access to retail investment products across the Gulf.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Philippines based on an image by mangpor2004 via Magnific.