08/08/23

FINTECH: Fintech Adoption in the Philippines Set to Increase by Over 72% by 2024

As published on: thefintechtimes.com, Tuesday 8 August, 2023.

The adoption rate of financial technology in the Philippines among the population aged 15 and over through mobile apps may increase by 72.2 per cent – to 59.3 million users by the end of 2023, according to a new report from consumer credit service Digido.

Fintech adoption continues to grow across the world, and the Philippines is no different according Digido’s most recent report. The consumer credit service revealed that it expects much of this predicted growth in adoption to be driven by the payments and transfers segment (+17.6 per cent).

Following this, e-wallets (+4.9 per cent), digital banking (+4.3 per cent), digital investments (+3.7 per cent) and digital lending (+0.9 per cent) were the remaining segments also contributing to the growth of this indicator.

In 2022, the adoption rate of fintech services among the population aged 15 years old and over in the Philippines reached 69.3 per cent; rising from 64.4 per cent in 2021. Similar to the region as a whole, the largest contributor was the e-commerce sector, with adoption among adults close to 100 per cent in the Philippines at the end of 2022.

‘Fintechisation’ in the Philippines

Of the 867 actively used fintech applications in the Philippines, Digido revealed that the digital banking and e-wallets segments are the most popular – with 163 (18.8 per cent) and 134 (15.5 per cent), respectively; followed by payments and transfers with 104 (11.9 per cent). Lastly, wealth management commanded 86 (9.9 per cent) and digital lending had 84 (9.6 per cent).

The payments and transfers segment exhibited the highest download growth rate at 11.3 per cent per month from 2018 to 2022, followed by business management (10.7 per cent) and financial advisors (8.4 per cent).

Farit Shakirov, country manager at Digido, said: “The findings from our report indicate that the inertial movements towards the ‘fintechisation’ of the population are going from strength to strength. The country’s fintech infrastructure is also showing high adaptability to ever-emerging challenges, mainly due to a large domestic market and progressive government support.

“As it stands, there remains an opportunity for the fintech industry to maintain momentum and build towards a more vibrant ecosystem by cultivating further trust in their services by providing seamless, communicable user experiences and fruitful collaborations.”

Regarding user growth across the past five years, the main contributors to the development of the fintech industry in the Philippines were e-wallets (+1026 per cent), digital lending (+330 per cent), as well as e-commerce (+222 per cent).

Tags

FinTech Phillipines