AUB strengthens tie-up with GCash

MANILA, Philippines — Listed Asia United Bank (AUB) has strengthened its partnership with GCash to leverage on the fintech’s 40-million subscriber base.

Mags Surtida, Cards and Acquiring Business Group head at AUB, said the expanded collaboration with GCash would enable local enterprises under the bank’s PayMate BOTTY to accept online orders via the newly launched GLife inside the GCash e-wallet app.

“The partnership with GCash will enable our existing PayMate BOTTY merchants to offer their products and services in GLife,” Surtida said.

As the global pandemic led to lockdown restrictions, preventing consumers from making in-store purchases, the volume of in-store payment transactions has dwindled.

This prompted AUB to launch PayMate BOTTY, an online order acceptance solution to enable merchants to accept orders and digital payments via web, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger.

With PayMate BOTTY, merchants can display their digital menu, take orders, accept digital payments, and integrate these with delivery for a seamless online order fulfilment.  Merchants’ sales from online or e-commerce is projected to grow by at least 30 percent yearly.

“With GLife, one of the newest services offered by GCash, our PayMate BOTTY merchants can now also do fully automated selling via the GCash app, in addition to via Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and their website,” Surtida said.

GCash president and chief executive officer Martha Sazon said the e-wallet giant continues to bring merchants closer to its 40 million customers.

“Our customers do not need to use another app to order food or retail goods. With GLife, we want to cater to a wide variety of merchants representing lifestyle brands, restaurants, service providers, and specialty stores. Our program partnership and integration with PayMate BOTTY will bring more merchants to GLife,” Sazon said.

The AUB-Mynt partnership started in 2019 when AUB became Mynt’s first banking partner in merchant acquiring. This partnership was borne out of both institutions’ common aspirations to promote digital payments and financial inclusion in the country.

The recent collaboration makes AUB Mynt’s first live program partner for GLife.

“This is aligned with our shared aspiration to digitally close the gap between the GCash users and AUB PayMate merchants,” AUB president Manuel Gomez said.

AUB PayMate was launched in 2017 to cash in on the rising popularity of the Philippines among Chinese tourists. The Rebisco-led bank made AUB PayMate a vehicle for bringing mobile payment and digital wallet service leader WeChat Pay into the local market for QR payment acceptance.