Digital transactions to increase — PayMaya

MANILA, Philippines — PayMaya Philippines Inc., the financial technology arm of PLDT’s Voyager Innovations, expects digital transactions to be pervasive in the medium term.

“I think in the next two to three years here in our market, we will see more digital transactions,” PayMaya chief executive officer Orlando Vea said.

Vea said digital transactions continue to gain traction in the country and is becoming the new normal for more Filipinos.

“It’s not only about payments, it’s about the whole digital experience. It’s the new normal and payment is only one part of it. Within payment, there are changes in behavior which means more adoption of cashless, but that’s only one part of the whole experience,” Vea said.

For PayMaya's, its user base has continuously been on the rise and is now close to reaching the 20-million mark.

PayMaya president Shailesh Baidwan said the company offers a lot of ways to sustain the push for digital payments and services adoption in the country.

“We should reach that (20 million user base) very soon because we have customers who use our wallet. We also have remittance through Smart Padala. So people who don’t have a wallet can also go to our negosyo, do remittances, do bills payment, transfer money, buy airtime load. All those things that you can do with our own app. We have a very large base,” Baidwan said.

PayMaya is currently processing over P200 billion worth of transactions annually, and expects to expand the amount by five times to P1 trillion by 2023.

“Without a big customer base, you won’t get the P1 trillion, right?” Vea said.

“As you know, we are an end-to-end payment company. We’re not just in wallets, we’re not just in payments processing. We cater to both in a very integrated way. I don’t think any other player has that kind of strategy or actual breadth of platforms,” he said.

PayMaya is the only fintech company in the country that offers integrated consumer and merchant payment solutions with the widest on-ground branch network.