Fintech “double unicorn” GCash brings the Philippines to the global stage at the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) 2022, where it shared how it has remained relevant and kept its robust growth beyond pandemic lockdowns.
Along with other fintech leaders, GCash president and CEO Martha Sazon joined the panel session talking about, “Navigating the Winds of Change in Digital Finance,” at the SFF Global Plenary. She was joined by other industry experts from Mastercard, Tencent, and bKash with the panel moderated by Haslinda Amin of Bloomberg TV.
Before an international audience, Sazon said, “we were there when the customers needed us the most. We were there to distribute financial aid to the constituents. We were also able to give access to essentials when people were locked down. And in the process, we built trust because we were one of the very few things that worked during the pandemic.”
Sazon also shared that while the GCash team worried growth may slow as the world opened up again, they were surprised to see that the strong growth momentum continued.
In fact, she added, GCash users are now getting stickier to the platform after the e-wallet has launched other use cases like lending, investment, savings, and insurtech.
But GCash isn’t stopping there as Sazon emphasized the fintech company has more meaningful innovations in store to improve the daily lives of its users and help it achieve its vision of ‘Finance for All’.
She added, GCash is focused on making its customers the “north star” so it can add more value to its services and create even more opportunities for growth.
“But the key really is to know the needs, serve the needs of customers, and, as I’ve always told my team, ‘there’s really no incentivized growth.’ So there’s now shortcut to growth, you have to have a compelling proposition for the customers,” Sazon explained.
GCash is the Philippines’ only “double unicorn” with a valuation of over $2 billion. It has evolved beyond its core money transfer business – offering other financial services to the country’s millions of unserved and underserved individuals. These include lending solutions, investment and insurance products, as well as other essential products and services under its e-commerce platform, GLife.
It’s also been expanding further by offering partner marketing solutions, specifically, AdTech, promo, and identity solutions — all leveraging GCash’s growing user base which on latest count, has already reached 69 million.
The Singapore FinTech Festival is now in its seventh year and is organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Elevandi. This year’s theme is ‘Building Resilient Business Models amid Volatility and Change’. The event features more than 850 expert speakers and over 250 hours of content across its week-long program. It’s regarded as the biggest gathering of its kind in the global fintech industry. The 2021 edition brought together 60,000 participants from over 160 countries.