Around 90% of Filipino users are fully embracing digital banking, fintech apps: report

Philippines – With the growing prevalence of online banking in the country, a recent survey by Capstone-Intel revealed that the majority of Filipinos are now gravitating towards digital financing, deeming it a go-to transaction convenience in the Philippine financial technology landscape.

According to the survey, 90% of the respondents observed a transition towards embracing digital banking applications, with GCash (94%) emerging as the primary choice for a significant number of users. This was followed by PayMaya (39%), ShopeePay (26%), bank applications (18%), GrabPay (8%), and other fintech applications (5%), respectively.

On the other hand, 2% of the overall respondents asserted that they do not use any banking applications.

Delving into the significance of the data, this result implies the necessity of establishing a more robust financial technology infrastructure. Given the current trend, it is only imperative for the government to amplify its efforts to ensure safe regulation.

Speaking about the implications of the survey, Ella Kristina Domingo-Coronel, research and publications director at Capstone-Intel, shared, “As we can see, even’sari-sari’ stores now have a digital financing option for their customers. This means that accessibility and availability are there. That’s why, even though these fintech applications are owned by the private sector, the national government has to enhance the country’s finance technology infrastructure, including the measures that safeguard consumers in order to ensure the safety of Filipinos.”

“While we see a considerable number of Filipinos using digital financing, we also observe several complaints about the inconvenience of online financing in the country, including the sluggish performance of these apps, its unending maintenance that burdens the consumers using online financing to pay their bills, and of course, the struggle with online scams,” she further continued.

Furthermore, Ella also pointed out that despite the country’s adoption of online financing in specific processes, there is still a need to normalise the utilisation of digital financing in various processes, be it for public or private transactions. Hence, it is vital to promote the widespread acceptance of the current state of financial technology across all demographics in the Philippines.

“I would say that we still have to promote the utilisation of digital financing in the Philippines in order to weaken the negative outlook of the public about this option and normalise the usage of these fintech applications for us to amplify public confidence in digital financing.”

“It was deemed possible by the pandemic for the Philippines to upgrade their banking processes; that’s why now that we are back to the usual setting, it is high time that we capitalise on this because not only does it save the time of the consumers, but the digital era is already here and we have to keep up with the demands of the changing financial and economic environment,” Ella concluded.