GCash’s new products make access to financial services easier

Kim Aimei Seng, Lending Mynt head, (left) and Izza Castelo, Mynt product manager of investments, discuss GCash’s new financial digital services during a press briefing in Cebu City.
CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON

FINANCIAL inclusion remains to be a foreign concept to most Filipinos who either find it hard to understand or avail of financial products and services.

Documentary requirements in banks for credit applications and long lines deter people from availing of these services.

Instead, most of them would resort to loan sharks who offer ridiculously high interest rates.

With this situation in mind, mobile money service GCash is offering two new digital financial services — GCredit and Invest Money — which they launched in Cebu yesterday.

“Our vision is financial inclusion. Part of that is delivering access to financial services. For credit, we envision disrupting the trust system of the Philippines. For banks, there are a lot of documentary requirements to prove that you can pay back,” said Kim Aimei Seng, head of lending of Mynt, the holdings company of GCash.

GCash’s GCredit service is a revolving credit line attached to one’s GCash account which can be used to purchase items via the mobile application’s scan-to-pay and pay bills features.

Under this service, which is available in the GCash mobile application, a user is given a certain credit limit which they can use per month depending on “trust score.”

The higher your score, the higher your credit limit is.

Computation for a user’s trust score is based on their relationship with GCash, which means that the more you use the GCash app’s features, the higher your score will be.

Your assigned credit can be used for transactions with GCash’s partner merchants including Ayala Malls, Robinsons, Rose Pharmacy, Southstar Drug, SM Stores, among others.

The interest rate for GCredit is at 5 percent.

They can pay their credit through GCash partner stores or after loading their mobile wallet which can be linked to a bank account.

GCredit has been available on beta testing since April.

But it was only recently that it was fully and formally launched.

According to Seng, they decided to also launch the new product in Cebu as they believe that it would be useful for Cebuanos and also since they already have a lot of partner merchants in Cebu.

“We want GCredit to be the credit line for every Cebuano, as it is practical, easy to use, and convenient. GCredit can be used for all of a family’s immediate needs such as paying bills and making staple purchases such as groceries, school supplies, and medicine,” she added.

On the other hand, GCash’s Invest Money is another new feature of the application where users can explore investment opportunities for as low as P50.