The Rise of Digital Wallets and Electronic Payments

The Coins.ph logo. Coins.ph is one of the leading digital wallets and bitcoin trading platform in the Philippines. It has started its operations on year 2014.

How do you usually pay your bills? Auto-debit? Bank Transfer? Bills Payment through Internet banking? Or how about paying through mobile wallets such as coins.ph, Gcash, or Paymaya? How do you usually do shopping? Do you do it online? Are you using your debit cards in paying your purchases?

According to the World Payments Report  2017 released by Capgemini, global digital payments volumes are predicted to increase by an average 10.9 percent through 2020, reaching nearly 726 billion transactions. This report does not even include those that are taking place through Blockchain technology-- the most popular among them is bitcoin.

With the rise of digital payments, due mainly to the ubiquity of the internet, no wonder a lot of Companies nowadays especially those from the banking and financial markets evolve to fill the demand and obviously to survive in an ever-changing business environment. Some of these Companies that are worth looking at are those that you might not heard of. The likes of Gcash, Paymaya, Coins.ph, Alipay, GetgGo, among others. Each of this Company is unique but they have something in common-- to dominate the digital payments market in the Country.

First from our list is Gcash. Gcash is a payment platform that transforms the mobile phone into a virtual wallet. It is operated by Mynt, a wholly owned financial services subsidiary of Globe Telecom. Gcash has several payment capabilities. First, it can be used to pay your bills such as water, electricity and so on. Second, it can be used to buy prepaid loads to all networks and even loads that can be used for skype mobile, steam, and cignal tv.

Another good feature of Gcash is it can be linked to Mastercard and American Express which you can use to buy anything online. On top of that the mobile app can also be used to book movies, buy food and groceries by simply using your phone's camera. Have you seen those weird photos and images consisting of an array of black and white squares posted in public areas? Those are QR Codes which are mainly to store information about a certain item. And these codes have been widely used to do payment transactions.


Probably the biggest factor that would differentiate Gcash from its competitors is its accessibility. It has lots of cash in option with a very minimal cost. You can conveniently transfer through your BPI or RCBC deposit account as long as your mobile banking is activated. You can also cash in using MoneyGram, PayPal, Western Union or even credit cards.

Another e-wallet that has been quite popular is Coins.ph. Coins is founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Ron Hose and Runar Petursson in 2014. It is operating in Thailand and the Philippines and has improved financial inclusion by serving a majority of the unbanked Southeast Asians. The distinguishing characteristic of Coins is that it is a blockchain-enabled platform. In coins, you can trade the two most popular cryptocurrencies which are Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Like Gcash, Coins also has lots of use. It can be used to buy loads and pay bills. And just recently, it introduced a new functionality that can both inquire and load a beep card using Android's Near-field communication (NFC) functionality. Another abilities that distinguish Coins from its competitors are its cash out options and its availability across several platforms. You can transfer your wallet's balance to almost all major universal, commercial and savings Bank for free.

According to Forbes and the worldbank, approximately 2 billion people worldwide and roughly 59% of adults in the developing world don't have a bank account. And in some developing countries, cash transactions represent up to 95% of all transactions. However, it's quite interesting to note that a large number of these unbanked people posses a smartphone which provides them an ability to open a digital wallet.

Digital wallets and blockchain technology will be the future goldmine in doing business. You don't have to fill out a lot of forms and process gazillions of paperworks in order to run your business. As long as you have those tiny gadgets in your hand, you can easily purchase things, pay bills, and do whatever you want in just a snap.