In a virtual press interview during the AWS Summit Online Asean 2022, Pebbles Sy, Chief Technology and Operations Officer at GCash, said that financial inclusion remains a challenge in the Philippines. GCash has been making significant headway in bridging the financial inclusion gap, however, due in part to its ecosystem approach and partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“While the number of Filipinos with access to banks and electronic money channels like GCash jumped to 41 million in 2021, we still have a long way to go to achieve Finance for All,” said Sy.
In the last few years, financial inclusion became a specific target for financial institutions in the Philippines, GCash included. But with a population of around 110 million, 63 percent of Filipinos still do not have a bank account, and of the unbanked, 26 percent do not have physical access to a bank.
But with the pandemic accelerating the growth of financial services like GCash, more users now go online to purchase essentials, to pay for bills, or to transfer funds. Today, GCash has become a lifeline to more than 60 million Filipinos. In fact, over 70 percent of the adult Filipino population now have a GCash account Sy added.
Globe, a major shareholder of GCash adopted a cloud-first policy back in 2014 with AWS providing critical support including training, architectural design, and cloud evangelism.
This made Globe one of the largest consumers of AWS in the region.So, it made sense for GCash to leverage that partnership to benefit from economies of scale and ecosystem support.
From an operational standpoint, migration to the cloud allowed GCash to be more agile and able to deliver scalable, reliable platforms at lower costs. This meant that GCash was able to devote more time and resources to deliver new products and services.
But the partnership goes beyond operational efficiencies for AWS and Globe. “We look at our strategic partners, both in Globe and GCash, as an extension of our organization. So, it’s really important that our partners share in our vision of building a cashless nation and delivering our vision of Finance for All. AWS understands that and they are invested in our success,” said Sy.
“We’re incredibly proud to help support GCash and Mynt’s mission of spurring the growth of financial inclusion and digitization of payments and financial services in the Philippines,” said Peter Murray, AWS Head of Financial Services for ASEAN. He further adds that it’s also a learning partnership, both from the technology and business perspective as well.
The partnership between GCash and AWS has now evolved from strengthening tech practices and ensuring core systems are well architected to now bridging GCash to a broader network of third-party independent software vendors and potential partners. This expands the ecosystem that GCash can now tap into.
In response to changing markets and consumer preferences, more and more financial service providers are looking to the cloud for growth. According to Murray, AWS is seeing significant growth across three different vectors in the financial services space: digital banking, data and analytics, and the modernization of core and critical applications.
