More than three quarters (77%) of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines have been unable to secure sufficient, or any, funding on at least one or more occasion over the last five years, according to a new report from cloud banking platform Mambu. This figure is significantly higher than that for the wider Southeast Asian region (67%). The ‘Small Business, Big Growth’ report surveyed over 1,000 MSME owners globally, including Filipino MSME owners, who set up their company and applied for a business loan in the last five years. More than half (56%) of Filipino MSMEs had…

Mobile wallet GCash has teamed up with the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) to further broaden its retail offerings and provide customers with more opportunities to grow their funds. This follows GCash’s move to make it possible for Filipinos to avail of retail investment offers from P50 through GInvest, an investment marketplace featured on the app. Through its partnership with BPI, GCash now gives its customers the opportunity to invest in BPI Investment Management’s (BIMI) ALFM Global Multi-Asset Income Fund (GMAIF) and the Philippine Stock Index Fund under GInvest. Customers can therefore start investing from P1,000 in ALFM GMAIF,…

In Asia Pacific (APAC), the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has fueled demand for cross-border payment capabilities and embedded financial solutions as small, online businesses embrace digital technologies to broaden their reach and go global, a recent report by Currencycloud shows. Embedded finance enables any company to embed pre-built financial solutions via an API integration into their offerings. These solutions can be anything ranging from payments and lending, to other specialised services such as insurance coverage, and investments. There are many reasons for the rise of embedded finance, including friendly regulations, acceleration toward a cashless society, and the growth of e-commerce. But…

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has granted crowdfunding licenses to SeedIn Technology and Eastern Securities Development Corporation. This will allow both entities to act as crowdfunding intermediaries and operate crowdfunding portals, providing the country’s small, medium and emerging enterprises (SME) with more funding options. This is part of the commission’s efforts to promote crowdfunding as a safe and sustainable investment option for Filipino investors. SeedIn is a debt-based crowdfunding platform that facilitates lending by all types of investors, including retail investors, accredited investors, and institutional investors to Philippine-based SME borrowers. The company’s platform matches debt issuers with its registered…

In a fintech startup’s race to scale up, they will face challenges across many fronts, including improving product profitability, recruiting and retaining talent, managing risks as well as complying with regulations. In this article, Oracle NetSuite addresses the 9 key emerging pain points that fintech startups face. 1. Securing growth capital from investors In a slowly maturing market, one of the biggest development challenges for fintech startups is attracting and persuading investors to back them. Having a brilliant or unique product isn’t enough in itself. Investors will also look at the business infrastructure as well as its sustainability and potential to…

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) supports President Rodrigo Duterte’s executive order to institutionalise the acceptance of the Philippine Identification (PhilID) or Philippine Identification System (PhilSys). This will enable the use of PhilID and PhilSys as sufficient proof of identity and age in all government and private transactions. BSP said that the executive order will encourage Filipinos, especially the marginalised and those from low-income households with no government-issued IDs, to open bank accounts paving the way for their inclusion into the formal financial system and reducing their vulnerability to onerous lending and other practices. In relation to this, the BSP…

Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet), the national payments network and shared central infrastructure for Malaysia’s financial markets, has named Farhan Ahmad as its new Group Chief Executive Officer effective 12 April 2022, succeeding Peter Schiesser. Farhan was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bento for Business, a fintech company based in Chicago and San Francisco that provides payment and expense management services to small and mid-sized businesses. He has extensive experience within the payments and banking services industry, having held significant leadership roles in several financial institutions like Barclays, Discover Financial Services, JP Morgan Chase, Bank One and FirstUSA. He…

The Fintech Alliance.PH remains committed to bolster the Philippines’ government bold moves to ensure more of the unbanked and underserved population will be onboarded into the formal financial system in the next six years. In a hybrid live and online event to launch the Philippines’ National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2022-2028, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) highlighted key strategies to make sure inclusive finance will be sustainable in the coming years. The NSFI 2022-2028 is focused on delivering four key outcomes, namely reduced disparities in financial inclusion, improved financial health and resilience, more financially capable and empowered consumers,…

Self-service kiosks are a safer alternative, especially in today’s challenging times of COVID-19 because they are contactless. It provides a safer and more convenient way for people to meet their transactional requirements. For a country like the Philippines, where there is still heavy reliance on cash for daily transactions, self-service kiosks installed in essential outlets proved vital during the lockdowns. The paying public don’t have to travel far from their residence or workplace since there are alternative kiosk locations to meet their payment needs like supermarkets, pharmacies and convenience stores. While the self-service kiosks are still at a nascent stage…

Philippines’ payment processing startup PayMongo announced that it has secured US$31 million in a Series B funding round. The round brings the company’s total funding to just under US$46 million, following a US$12 million Series A round in 2020 and a US$2.7 million seed round in 2019. New investors participating in the round include Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund, Philippine VC firms ICCP-SBI Venture Partners and Lisa Gokongwei’s Kaya Founders, along with existing investors Global Founders Capital and SOMA Capital. Also joining the round are founders of European fintech unicorns and startups Qonto, Viva Wallet, Billie and Scalable. with the new…

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has rolled out an updated National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2022-2028. The NSFI is a blueprint for broad-based growth and financial resilience, and shows the collective commitment of the government, private sector, and civil society to push forward financial inclusion. This builds on the gains of the first strategy launched in 2015 and takes into consideration the COVID-19 pandemic and rapid developments in financial services. According to BSP, currently 41 million of adult Filipinos have access to basic bank accounts and e-money accounts as of the third quarter of last year. The central…

The Union Bank of the Philippines has become the first commercial bank in the country to be part of the global R3 Sandbox for Digital Currencies. The sandbox brings together commercial banks, central banks, payment providers and exchanges to collaborate with one another in a ‘ready-made payments ecosystem’ to evaluate Central Bank Digital Currencies’ (CBDC) use cases, learn, transact, and test roll-out strategies and designs. Following UnionBank’s launch of PHX, its stablecoin, in 2019, the bank is keen to see how participation in the sandbox aligns with its vision, and how it will result in the creation of a new…

The Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) announced that it has raised more than US$50 million in funding led by Tiger Global. Tiger’s investment completes the company’s Series B funding round which began with US$12.5 million in August 2021. Other investors include Kingsway Capital, Jump Capital, Draper Dragon, Oak Drive Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, Ripple and UBX Ventures. Beenext Ventures and Cadenza Capital Management who led PDAX’s Seed and Series A rounds respectively, had also joined the round. The exchange, which is licensed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, said that the funds will go towards building a safe and accessible infrastructure…

Philippines’ digital bank Tonik announced that it closed a US$131 million Series B equity funding round led by Japan’s Mizuho Bank which has been active in the country since 1981. Other significant new investors in the round included Prosus Ventures who was formerly known as Naspers Ventures, the co-founder of DST Partners Rahul Mehta, as well as a Singapore investment fund Sixteenth Street Capital and Indonesian family office Nuri Group. Existing investors include Sequoia India, Point72 Ventures, Insignia, iGlobe, Alpha JWC, Citius, Blauwpark, and Kraft. Tonik said that it will use the Series B funding to accelerate the growth of…

Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) has witnessed a five-digit growth in both transaction volume and value through its digital platforms as of 2021. The bank’s financial inclusion app DiskarTech has reached over five million downloads in less than two years which is more than double from the previous year end. As of December 2021, it had recorded a gross transaction value in excess of Php 18.3 billion, a growth of 139 percent compared to previous year. The app’s partner deposits or cash-in also booked a 26,568 percent and 6,632 percent surge in transaction value and volume compared to 2020. DiskarTech…

Plentina, a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) startup for emerging markets, has partnered Southeast Asian e-retailer ZALORA to offer its short-term financing solution. Filipinos can download the Plentina app for loans up to P5,000 in ZALORA e-vouchers to load their wallets. This will be subject to their credit limit with Plentina. The Plentina app has surpassed 200,000 downloads since its launch in 2020 to offer store credit for essential purchases such as groceries, medicine, food, and office supplies. The company said that it aims to provide financial access to the majority of Filipinos who do not have access to fair credit…

Qwikcilver, a subsidiary of Pine Labs and provider of end-to-end gifting solutions, has partnered with Philippine Airlines (PAL) for its e-gift card programme. Designed in collaboration with travel technology company Amadeus, this programme will assist PAL to further enhance the customer satisfaction by allowing immediate refund vouchers in the form of travel credits. Known as Asset Manager by Qwikcilver, the programme, is a bespoke, modern solution and is completely software as a service (SaaS) based. Offering a holistic, digital, real-time, multi-currency, multi-lingual, future-ready and versatile platform, it enables airlines to manage their various commonly encountered passenger-oriented requirements. Kumar Sudarsan, President…

The banking industry is in the midst of a period of intense transformation in Southeast Asia, and indeed the world, driven in part by the pandemic, but also influenced heavily by changing consumer demand and fast-moving technological innovation. Predicting the future of banking, while never an easy task, is now more uncertain than ever, with new trends emerging regularly and regulatory changes occurring at pace. To get a clearer understanding of how Southeast Asian banks view the future of core banking within their organisations, IDC Financial Insights interviewed a number of Southeast Asian banking executives, discussing their thoughts on legacy…

GrowSari, a Philippines’ B2B e-commerce platform serving micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), has secured US$45 million in a Series C funding round from global investment firm KKR. According to GrowSari, the ongoing Series C round is significantly oversubscribed as it has drawn keen interest from new and existing investors. The round’s final composition is being wrapped up. The company said that it will be expanding into more regions across the Philippines and strengthen its financial services capabilities with the new funds. In addition to the funds raised, GrowSari will also tap into KKR’s industry, operational and financial expertise and…

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has issued guidelines on the settlement of electronic payments under the National Retail Payment System (NRPS) Framework. The settlement guidelines provide the responsibilities and minimum requirements to be adhered to by BSP-supervised financial institutions participating in the Automated Clearing Houses (ACH) established under the NRPS, namely, InstaPay and PESONet, as well as the respective Clearing Switch Operators (CSOs) of the ACHs. Key provisions include requiring clearing participants to maintain a separate demand deposit account (DDA) per settlement mechanism type. The guidelines also stipulate that CSOs implementing batch settlement of e-payments shall enable clearing participants…