Philippine digital payments have raced ahead of formal credit access, leaving a wide gap between how consumers pay and how they borrow.
Now, a high-profile alliance between payment gateway PayMongo and consumer finance platform Skyro is looking to close that distance.
Under a partnership announced earlier this month, customers approved for a Skyro credit line can seamlessly spend it at QR Ph merchants across PayMongo’s extensive digital network.
The integration requires zero infrastructure changes for businesses, allowing merchants to accept QR payments as they normally would while tapping into a brand-new pool of funded buyers.
Bridging the credit gap in the Philippines
The mismatch between digital adoption and credit penetration has long been a structural challenge in the Philippines.
While digital transactions accounted for 57.4% of total retail payment volume in 2024 — surpassing the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) 50% target — formal credit remains scarce.
TransUnion data from October 2025 shows that only 1 in 20 Filipino consumers holds a credit card, and the BSP’s 2025 Financial Inclusion Survey revealed that just 16% of borrowing adults turn to formal financial sources.
Meanwhile, QR Ph has cemented itself as the default payment option, accounting for 55% of PayMongo’s total payment volume in the first half of 2026 alone, outstripping traditional credit cards.
“Skyro has built the credit, and we have built both the places to spend it and the rails to move it,” said PayMongo CEO Jojo Malolos.
“Lenders and fintechs increasingly come to us for the payments infrastructure that carries money across the lending lifecycle, so they can focus on their product instead of building every payment rail themselves. What this partnership does is put a Skyro credit line in front of thousands of Filipino merchants already running on PayMongo. We are giving those businesses customers who can actually afford to buy,” he added.
Through this collaboration, customers can apply for Skyro’s financing products —including its reusable digital credit line, SkyroCredit — using just a single government-issued ID, entirely bypassing the need for traditional credit history or credit cards.
Skyro Co-Founder and Co-CEO Nasim Aliev
For Skyro, partnering with PayMongo also broadens digital repayment options across its portfolio, making it easier for users to settle balances via online banks and e-wallets.
Skyro Co-Founder and Co-CEO Nasim Aliev emphasized that robust infrastructure is critical to expanding financial services to the unbanked and underbanked.
“Building good, sustainable payments infrastructure is the foundation for financial services to reach customers who are unbanked or underbanked,” Aliev said. “For us, this is not only about lending; we are moving in the direction of financial services Filipinos can use on a daily basis, and more frequent transactions need more reliable infrastructure.”
By letting Skyro extend its reach into PayMongo’s merchant network without building payment acceptance from scratch, the partnership embodies a growing segment of PayMongo’s business model: acting as the regulated financial operating system that powers fintechs and lenders across fund disbursement, merchant collection, and loan repayment.
Ultimately, the collaboration aligns closely with the BSP’s broader regulatory agenda to champion digital payments while widening responsible financial inclusion for underserved Filipinos.
