MANILA, Philippines–A new payments service has debuted in the Philippines that allows the underserved, many without bank accounts, to make cashless POS payments.
Globe Telecom announced that its subscribers could use their mobile phones for cashless transactions, even those without credit cards. The mobile wallet is built into Globe's GCash service and merchants only need to scan a QR code on the phone to complete a transaction, ABS-CBN News reported.
GCash is a service of Mynt, Globe's financial technology start-up, which recently formed a strategic partnership with Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Financial.
"Now that more people are using data on their smartphones, the time is ripe to enable digital payments using the smartphone and let this go mainstream," said Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said in the ABS-CBN News report.
GCash scan-to-pay will bring to the Philippines convenience similar to Ma's Alipay, which has 520 million users, Ant Financial CEO Eric Jing said in a statement. The cashless payment service aims to make financial services available to more Filipinos as 75% of the population have no bank accounts, said GCash CEO Albert Tinio, in the ABS-CBN News report.
"We want to enable aspirations of the financially underserved, Our advocacy is financial inclusion," Tinio said.
GCash can also be used to pay bills, send or transfer money and buy movie tickets, ABS-CBN News noted.