Author: Tom Noda

Philippines Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX), a locally based cryptocurrency exchange platform recently received an undisclosed sum of funding from BitMEX Ventures. This news follows a recent investment by Consensys into PDAX. According to BitMEX co-founder and CEO Arthur Hayes, they see a substantial amount of trading volume from users in the Philippines. “We are confident in the transformative potential of cryptocurrency and PDAX’s ability to widen access to the Philippines market and provide the tools to learn more about financial markets,” Hayes said, noting BitMEX targets to further empower traders with a more improved and affordable Bitcoin transfer platform. Founded…

The Ayala Corporation, Philippines’ oldest conglomerate, is raising a new venture capital fund worth US$150 million, dedicated towards investing into early stage startups engaged in e-commerce, as well as what the company deems as disruptive technologies; like fintech, healthtech, artificial intelligence, among others. The fund will be looking into investments on a global level. The goal here is to complement the group’s traditional brick-and-mortar operations, with the goal of future-proofing their operations. Pegged to be one of the biggest VC funds in the Philippines, the money will be raised through Ayala’s subsidiaries, Bank of Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, AC Energy, Ayala…

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has green-lit another 3 cryptocurrency exchanges to operate in the Philippines. The new licensed firms include Bexpress Inc,  Coinville Phils Inc. and Aba Global Philippines Inc. This brings the total number of licensed cryptocurrency exchange in Philippines to 10. Similar to previous cryptocurrency exchange licenses that BSP has granted it only permits for the exchanges to use cryptocurrency for the purposes of remittance and payments rather than a form of investment. However, with Bitcoin recently breaking the US$ 5,000 mark again, it seems it would be more likely for one to use cryptocurrencies as form of investment…

Singapore-based payroll services provider Excelity Global has partnered with Philippine mobile money wallet GCash to allow disbursement of salaries and reimbursements in an employee’s GCash account. This feature is directly integrated with Excelity’s payroll clients through the GCash App and the GCash Mastercard. Financial inclusion remains a challenge that lawmakers are attempting to tackle in Philippines, partnerships like this spells out a larger trend of fintechs attempting to be part of the solution. The Philippine based payments company is hardly alone in their attempt, as recent as last week Western Union tied-up with Coins.Ph to enable Filipinos to receive transfers…

Blockchain-based financial services company Coins.ph and  Western Union have teamed up to allow the fintech startup’s five million customers receive international and domestic money transfers directly into their mobile wallets in the Philippines. The collaboration was announced following news of Coins.ph’s acquisition by Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek last January. According to their press release, with the integration of the Coins.ph blockchain-enabled platform and Western Union’s cross-border platform, Filipinos can receive and hold international money transfers initiated from Western Union’s digital network in more than 60 countries and retail network in more 200 countries and territories. Coins.ph co-founder and CEO Ron…

Philippines is described by some as a hidden gem in the South East Asian fintech scene, our previous Fintech Philippines 2018 report demonstrates that this archipelagic nation has all the recipes in place for a booming fintech sector. A similar report published by the Milken Institute also suggested that Philippines will be entering a new phase of development. Those in the fintech sector would be remiss to overlook fintech scene in Philippines and what better way to get to know the scene than to attend some of the key fintech events in Philippines. In service of that, we’ve selected 11…

Manila-based insurtech startup Saphron has raised SGD1.35 million seed fund coming from fintech-focused VC fund Sage, and Talino Labs, a venture lab that supports companies engaged in digital transformation. Founded recently by solutions architect Francisco “Kiko” Reyes Jr, Saphron plans to use the fresh capital to address the financial inclusion gap in the Philippines by making the delivery of insurance radically accessible. The startup aims to enable clients develop technologies that transform consumer experiences. Sage and Talino Labs, in a joint statement, expressed optimism in Saphron’s capability “to launch transformative platforms that solve real needs, by way of intelligent, cutting…

Crypto-exchange platform Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) has raised an undisclosed amount of investment made by ConsenSys Ventures, the venture capital arm of US-based blockchain software firm ConsenSys. Founded in 2017 by Nichel Gaba, Krystian Kucharzyk, and Yang Yang Zhang, PDAX is a centralized trading platform that offers Filipinos an order book on which to trade digital assets in an open market for the first time. It is regulated by both the central bank (BSP) and securities regulator (SEC) in the Philippines. PDAX claims it will make ownership of digital assets in the Philippines more accessible because users can cash…

Singapore’s diversified group of companies Citystate Group made a seed investment in Ticket2Me, a blockchain-powered ticketing startup from the Philippines. The startup is now gearing for business expansion in Southeast Asia. Ticket2Me raised $350,000 in fresh capital and reportedly plans to use it to expand operations in major cities outside Metro Manila and Metro Cebu including overseas such as Hong Kong and Malaysia. Founded in 2017, Ticket2Me claims to be “Southeast Asia’s first blockchain-enabled ticketing marketplace” which also does event registration and audience analytics platform for organizers, ticket buyers and everyone else in between. It established a regional office in…

SendFriend, a Philippine-focused remittance market startup, has raised up to US$1.7 million capital in a venture round backed by blockchain giant Ripple also known as the cryptocurrency XRP. Other leading investors include the MIT Lab, Mastercard Foundation, Barclays, Techstars, Mahindra Finance, 2020 Ventures, and 8 Decimal Capital. Founded in 2017, SendFriend is headquartered in Greater New York City that is focused on providing remittance services to millions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), these workers greatly contribute to the Philippines’ GDP growth by sending money to their families back home. The Philippines’ remittance and international money transfer industry is the third…

Be it formal or casual, blockchain education is becoming a regular thing in the Philippines although its usage in different sectors, education in itself, has yet to be applied. AMBERLab or Ateneo-MediXserve Blockchain Education & Reasearch Lab defines blockchain as “an incorruptible distributed data-based technology and a peer-to-peer transaction system.” AMBERLab is one of the newly-formed organizations that seeks to advance blockchain education in the Philippines. In an exclusive interview with Fintech News Network, ConsenSys Solutions Philippines Lead, Aiai Garcia said there is a growing interest in blockchain education in the Philippines but formal blockchain education in the country is…

UnionBank of the Philippines has set its eyes on revolutionising the supply chain finance in the Philippines through its tie-up with tech giant IBM. IBM Philippines chief technologist Lope Doromal Jr disclosed that UnionBank and IBM are working on a blockchain-based solution. Doromal claimed the cloud-based application is one of the first projects of its kind in the Philippines outside of traditional banking, and is designed to transform trade finance transactions through a permissioned distributed ledger. “Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, the supply chain finance solution from UnionBank will be available to all their customers and partners who will…

The Philippines’ “fintech city ” Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA) has crafted a new set of rules in the acquisition and trading of cryptocurrency assets in the Philippines meant to effectively regulate and protect investors. CEZA disclosed it has approved the Digital Asset Token Offering (DATO) regulations that cover the acquisition of crypto assets, including utility and security tokens. Asia Blockchain and Crypto Association Appointed as a Self Regulatory Organisation While CEZA is the principal regulating authority under the new framework, it has designated the Asia Blockchain and Crypto Association (ABACA) as a self-regulatory organization to help implement and enforce…

A recently-launched venture capital fund by Philippine-based VC company Core Capital and Malaysia-based VC Gobi Partners made its first two investments in a healthtech startup MariaHealth and an edutech firm called Edukasyon.ph. The VC fund Gobi-Core Philippine Fund (PH Fund) is a $10 million fund for seed-stage and pre-Series A companies in the Philippines launched last October. Amounts of the two funding rounds in the local startups were undisclosed. Other investors in MariaHealth’s seed round include Wavemaker and Hustle Fund. Founded in 2015, MariaHealth has partnered with insurance practitioners PhilCare, Maxicare, AsianLife, and MediCard. MariaHealth serves as an online portal…

Having postponed the release of its final rules on ICOs (initial coin offerings), the Philippine SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has set its second round of public consultation open until January 15, 2019. “The Commission is inviting banks, investment houses, the investing public and other interested parties to submit their views, comments and inputs to the said proposed rules or guidelines which are revised based on the comments received during the previous round of public consultation,” SEC said in a statement. SEC issued its consultation last August and was expected to release its ICO rules by end-2018 but decided to…

As predicted by Fintechnews the Philippines is the next stop in GrabPay’s expansion in South East Asia. Grab and Philippine-based conglomerate SM Investments Corp (SM) signed a strategic partnership in a bid to expand the GrabPay mobile wallet in the Philippines and drive more financial inclusion for Filipinos. The tie up combines the strengths of Grab’s large user base and tech platform with SM’s broad portfolio of flagship shopping malls, banks and merchant-partners nationwide. Starting 2019, consumers can use GrabPay to pay for goods and services and load their mobile or e-wallet from SM group’s market-leading merchant and banking network.…

“A way to carry your money inside your cellphone”. This is perhaps the simplest meaning of an e-wallet as defined by Philippine-based mobile money service GCash. For the past few years, different companies such as telcos, banks, fintech startups, financial services, and offline-to-online (O2O) firms have rolled out their e-wallets in the Philippines tailor fit mostly for the country’s unbanked population of 72.9 million or 69 per cent of 105.7 million Filipinos. Features and capabilities of e-wallet apps vary from company to company and the location where they are being used. They obviously lead to the creation of a cashless…

Voyager Innovations, the fintech arm of the Philippines’ top digital telecommunications firm PLDT Inc, has sealed a US$40 million investment from International Finance Corp (IFC), and IFC Emerging Asia Fund with both acquiring a minority stake in the company. Voyager completed the deal just over a month after it raised US$175 million from global investment firm KKR, and China-based internet services provider Tencent Holdings Ltd last October 4, bringing Voyager’s total external funding to US$215 million. Both KKR and Tencent acquired a substantial minority stake in Voyager. The latest business development has made PLDT’s ownership stake in Voyager less than…

Here are selected Fintech and Blockchain Events in the Philippines for November to December 2018. If an important event is missing, send us an Email or comment on this post. AGSB Month: Finance Game Changers November 17, 2018 Ateneo Professional Schools Auditorium #20 Rockwell Drive, Makati City The rising technological changes in the finance industry is seen to surely disrupt businesses in the future. How sure are you in knowing what else FinTech has to offer in the coming years? Get to know more about this with the knowledge to be shared by Mr. Chris Manguera of Mynt Technologies (GCash)…

Despite the Philippines’ catch up internet speed, mobile connectivity, and financial inclusion, it has attracted and inspired many innovative people in the business and technology sectors who saw all these problems as opportunities in disguise. Latest statistics showed that in 2017 almost 70 per cent of the country’s 105.7 million population were recorded unbanked even as access to financial products and services remained low while overseas remittances continue to soar high at $33 billion. Here’s a random list of fintech founders who continue to find ways in solving the country’s fintech gaps: John Joseph Gabriel Puzon Founder, Posible.net Called JG…