Mobile Wallets Spotlight: the Philippines

Over the past 2 years, Southeast Asia added more than 70 million online shoppers. One of the countries where mobile wallets are driving online shopping growth is the Philippines.

In the Philippines, the mobile payments market is dominated by the duopoly of GCash and PayMaya, which are both born out of traditional mobile money and owned by mobile operators, Globe and Smart. Grab, the regional super app is looking to break the duopoly after a number of stops and starts in the Philippines market.

The Philippines: a quickly growing market for mobile wallet payments

The Philippines is poised for hypergrowth in mobile payments over the next five years with transactions set to increase by nearly ninefold, while user adoption is set to triple:

  • Mobile wallet users: 25M in 2020, forecast to grow to 75M by 2025
  • Mobile wallet ownership: 22% of the population, 63% by 2025
  • Mobile wallet transaction volume: 972M transactions, 8.9B transactions by 2025
  • Mobile wallet transaction value: $15B, $63.4B by 2025

The mobile wallet duopoly of GCash and PayMaya in the Philippines mirrors the mobile operator duopoly of the two telcos that created those wallets, Globe and Smart.

GrabPay is the most likely player to challenge the ecosystem, thanks to super app functionality, significant foreign venture capital, as well as increasing smartphone penetration (due to reach 85% by 2025).

Although GrabPay is growing more rapidly than GCash and PayMaya, we do not foresee it surpassing either one in the next five years:

Mobile Wallet Market Share Forecast Philippines
Mobile wallet users, by millions, for different e-wallets

Want to launch mobile wallet payments in the Philippines? Conclusions

For merchants looking to grow their revenue in the Philippines, connecting to mobile wallets to reach online consumers is crucial. If you are looking to launch mobile wallets in the Philippines and other Asian countries through one turnkey integration, get in touch.

For more data on mobile wallet payments in the Philippines and 20+ other countries, download our Mobile Wallets Report 2021.

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