Philippine Stock Exchange president Ramon Monzon’s bet on small Filipino investors is starting to pay off as the country’s biggest mobile wallet, GCash, reported a surge in new accounts in less than a year, bolstering its user market share to 20 percent.
This means one if five stock market accounts are on GStocks, putting it on par with some of the country’s biggest stock brokerage houses, although portfolio sizes are likely of a smaller size.
GStocks, introduced in the latter part of 2023 via a three-way deal with the PSE and broker AB Capital Securities, is part of a wave of initiatives led by the PSE to bring in more retail investors to the market.
The historically low stock market participation rate in the Philippines received a boost as GStocks alone added 500,000 new users since its launch, briefing materials from parent firm Globe Telecom showed.
This brings the number of domestic stock market users to around 2.5 million, still a small fraction compared to the population of over 110 million.
GCash did not disclose user volume data, making it difficult to assess how active the new users are. The PSE previously set a goal to bring in nine million new stock market users within five years.
GCash, a venture between the Ayala Group’s Globe and Chinese tech giant Ant Group, is also bullish on other segments such as loans.
It said on Wednesday that loans disbursed reached P135 billion to 4.5 million borrowers.
The company is also aggressively expanding overseas with the planned addition of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Singapore this year, adding to 13 countries in its network.
Miguel R. Camus has been a reporter covering various domestic business topics since 2009.
