GCash, the country’s no.1 mobile wallet app, has seen the unprecedented growth of the digital economy in the Philippines during COVID-19 and has made the necessary preparations for it.
This, in essence, is how Martha Sazon, president and CEO of GCash, explained the situation when asked how the company was able to weather the storm at the height of the pandemic more than two years ago.
“As the pandemic hastened the adoption of digital services, it led to the boom of the internet economy. Anticipating the shift to online, we made sure that GCash will be ready for the surge and prepared to be a lifeline of Filipinos and Filipino businesses,” shared Sazon in her speech delivered during the AWS Summit ASEAN, an event attended by technology and business decision-makers who wish to gain knowledge on cloud technology.
Today, thanks to its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-wallet app has since made it easier to strengthen the skills and expertise of their consultants, engineers, architects, and developers so they may easily keep up with the expected surge of digital transformation in the Philippines.
Providing more effective digital business solutions
The partnership with AWS has since facilitated more effective digital business solutions and innovative digital financial services for GCash by streamlining its business process, which is crucial in the digitally-driven world.
GCash was also able to leverage AWS’ well-built framework to minimize company expenditures and realize approximately USD 3.8 million worth of savings in cloud-related expenses in 2021.
Using advanced robotic processes automation on AWS, GCash was able to swiftly automate its finance processes, enjoying approximately 85 percent improvement in processing time for the recount, refunding, and resettlement of its financial services, saving the company more than 2,600 man-hours per month.
Sazon also emphasized the benefits of using cloud technology.
“Cloud has helped us in further developing our platforms and allowed us to empower more Filipinos with the introduction of innovative and accessible financial solutions like GGives and GCashPera Outlet (PO),” she noted. GGives is a “buy now, pay later” product, while GCashPera Outlet is a digital solution designed for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
In a statement, Sazon further stated, “We have constantly been innovating to give Filipinos, especially the unbanked, access to financial services and to uplift their lives. Through AWS, we were able to empower millions of Filipinos as the world began to close down. We will continue working with AWS as the world slowly continues to open up, and we will continue to provide more opportunities in order to make every Filipino’s life better.”
Supporting a fast-growing customer base
Conor McNamara, managing director of AWS ASEAN, also shared his insights on working with GCash.
“When you’re moving as quickly as Mynt is, you want to make sure that you’re able to scale quickly and support its fast-growing customer base. They also have a very aggressive product innovation roadmap. We’re very focused as well on the training and improving the productivity of developers and making sure that we provide access to our local, regional, and global team so that AWS and Mynt can be as productive as possible in terms of launching new products, access to on-demand cloud infrastructure, and cutting edge services,” McNamara said.
Mynt, the operator of mobile wallet GCash, has since raised fresh funds from various investors and is now valued at over $2 billion.
With its vision of financial inclusion for all, Mynt’s GCash app now has more than 66 million users in the Philippines who are said to trust the app for its essential transactions, which include sending money, buying prepaid loads, paying bills, and bank transfer transactions.
Aside from these, the e-wallet app also offers a full suite of financial products such as “GSave,” an online savings bank; “GInvest,” an easy investment feature; “GCredit,” a personal credit line with up to P30,000 credit line and up to 3% prorated interest rate; and “GLife,” an e-commerce feature of the GCash app that allows users to shop exclusive deals from brands across retail, food, gaming, entertainment, and transport industries.