MANILA, Philippines — Mobile wallet GCash and digital banking services provider CIMB Bank are offering as much as seven percent interest per annum on GSave to help Filipinos grow their finances and entice more of the unbanked population to open a savings account.
GCash said the offer, which is available to its users who will sign up for their first GSave account from April 1 to June 30, is currently the highest interest rate available in the market.
It said the seven percent per annum interest rate would be effective for new users and would be applied to the first P100,000 average daily balance in the account for the first three months after successful account opening.
A four percent per annum promo interest rate will apply to balances from P100,000 to P200,000, which GCash said is still higher than what traditional banks offer.
“At GCash, we continuously strive to realize our vision of financial inclusion for all which is why we try to address the barrier between unbanked Filipinos and having a savings account,” GCash president and CEO Martha Sazon said.
“With GSave, we are enabling more Filipinos to grow their finances and build a better future for themselves and their loved ones,” she said.
The GSave feature has been live in the GCash app since December 2018 in partnership with CIMB Bank.
It provides unbanked Filipinos with the opportunity to open a savings account that requires no initial deposit, maintaining balance or lock-in period.
GCash said a study it conducted revealed that one out of every five banked adults has a GSave account, while 5.3 million users have registered with GSave by the end of the first quarter.
Its partnership with CIMB Bank has been helping support the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ thrust to grow the number of Filipinos with a formal bank account by up to 70 percent in 2023.
The number of banked Filipino adults has already increased to 41 million as of the third quarter of 2021 or around 53 percent of total adult Filipinos based on estimates from monetary authorities.