PhilippinesAn archipelago connected by mobile

While access to formal financial services varies widely in the Philippines, eWallets, and GCash in particular, serve those who don’t have a bank account or card.

GCash is now part of everyday financial life for millions of people, covering payments, transfers and bills, and bringing more of them into the formal financial system along the way. GCash is used by around 94 million Filipinos and has grown into a financial SuperApp that allows customers to send and receive money, pay bills and merchants, but also borrow, save, invest and buy insurance.

More than 9 million people now save through GSave, and over 3 million have taken out a loan. And online, GCash handles nearly nine in ten wallet payments. Maya is a distant second, with GrabPay, Coins.ph and Lazada’s wallet further behind. Together, eWallets take 40% of eCommerce spending in 2026, and are on course to hit 47% by 2028.

With several apps in play, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) set out to stop fragmentation from holding things back. QR Ph, the national QR standard at the heart of its Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, lets shoppers scan any participating merchant’s code with any bank or wallet app, and money moves instantly over InstaPay.

This approach is working. Digital payments made up 65% of retail transactions in 2025, beating a target set for 2028. And A2A payments are climbing online too, from 18% of eCommerce spending in 2026 to almost 20% by 2028, while cards slip from 24% to 19% and cash falls to around one in ten.

Filipinos will spend around US$ 43 billion online this year, a market growing close to 20% a year and set to head past US$ 60 billion by 2028. Around 29% of it goes to merchants abroad, one of the highest cross-border shares in Asia, and that slice is growing fastest.

In our latest retail consumer survey, 49% of Filipino shoppers said they wouldn’t buy from a foreign brand that didn’t take their preferred payment method, even at a much lower price. Only 22% said they would, which was the strongest resistance in any of the markets we surveyed. Budgets are tight too: 64% named affordability as a barrier.

Remittances are a part of everyday life and worth around 10% of GDP. Cash sent home by Filipinos working abroad hit a record US$ 35.6 billion in 2025, and more of it now lands in an eWallet. But it isn’t only family money coming home. The Philippines is also one of the world’s biggest sources of online freelance and gig work, so fast, low-cost payouts matter as much as checkout. Stablecoins are finding a role too, particularly in cross-border payments and remittances. The Philippines remains one of the world’s top 20 markets for grassroots crypto adoption, ranking 19th globally in 2026.