Population
119M
Online population
86.9M
Currency
PHP
Population - 119M
At the start of 2024, 48.5% of the Philippines’ population lived in urban centres, while 51.5% lived in rural areas.
Internet penetration - 73.6%
There were 86.9M internet users in the Philippines at the start of 2024.
The Philippines FinTech Map 2023 shows the country’s FinTech sector grew by more than 38% in less than two years, to 299 companies as of August 2023.
Digital payments and the digital economy are expected to soar in the Philippines in 2024, as the country benefits from the increasing adoption of eCommerce, mobile payments, and contactless payments, as well as the supportive regulatory environment and initiatives by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
In an effort to galvanise the Philippine financial sector and to promote financial inclusion for the massively underserved banking population, the BSP’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap set two primary goals for the country: first, to increase the share of digital transactions in total payment volume to 50% by 2023; and second, to ensure that 70% of Filipino adults have access to a transaction account.
As of 2023, the BSP now reports that over 41M adult Filipinos now have access to bank and e-money accounts. At this rate, the central bank claims that financially including 70% of Filipino adults is on track for the very near future, likely by 2024, and that half of retail payments in the country were already of a digital nature.
Filipino FinTech companies raised a total of eight deals in the first three quarters of 2023, half as many as from the same period the previous year according to data from FinTech Global Research. Yet a flurry of M&A deals still took place amongst both fintech and traditional financial institutions, such as the full acquisition of Electronic Commerce Payments Inc (ECPay) by Mynt, which owns leading e-wallet GCash, or the merger between Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Robinsons Bank Corporation (RBC).
Other 2023 acquisitions had an international flavour, including the 100% acquisition of Philippine-based Finscore Inc by Malaysia’s CTOS Digital Bhd and the 90% stake of digital lender Y Finance purchased by UAE-based Astra Tech.
Amid a slowly recovering economic outlook, expect more deals and more market consolidation to take place in 2024 as some FinTech segments become more streamlined, but the industry overall continues to grow. In
<aside> 🪁 FinTech Alliance FinTech Alliance.ph is the Philippines’ leading and largest digital trade organization comprised of startups and unicorns collectively generating over 90% of digital-initiated transactions volume in the country today. From 2022 to 2025, FinTech Alliance.ph will be a recognized Self Regulating Organization (SRO) in the ASEAN that has empowered millions of Filipinos to be part of the formal financial system.
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