PayMaya Philippines to tap ASEAN market

MANILA, Philippines – PayMaya Philippines Incorporated – the digital financial services unit of PLDT Incorporated and Smart Communications Incorporated – is expanding its reach to two member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“We’ll start initially with ASEAN then target countries even outside Asia,” PayMaya Philippines President and CEO Orlando Vea told reporters on the sidelines of #NowNation campaign launch in Makati City.

PayMaya Philippines COO Benjie Fernandez said the group is eyeing about 10 local and international partnerships this year.

“Within the month of July, you will see more than half of that happen, including some international partnerships,” Fernandez said.

The PayMaya COO hinted that his firm is in talks with Manila Electric Company, Metro Pacific Investment Corporation‘s toll road units, PLDT, and Cignal TV Incorporated – all businesses chaired by Manuel V. Pangilinan.

“Soon after Uber, you will hear us partnering with the number one utility company, the number one toll road, the number one telephone, the number one pay TV and the number one global social company and the number one global payments company,” Fernandez said during the launch.

“All of this will happen within the next few weeks,” he added.

PayMaya last week entered into a partnership with Uber that will allow commuters to experience the ride-sharing service’s cashless payment transaction even without a credit card.

Lead in mobile payments

Pangilinan said in an annual stockholders meeting that his group sees transaction volume of PayMaya across its platforms hitting P200 billion for the entire 2016.

This was after PayMaya hit a throughput of P50 billion in the first quarter of 2016, Pangilinan added.

Taking the lead in the mobile payments business, PayMaya will source volumes from its mobile wallet app, mobile payments business, and mobile money transfer service Smart Padala.

“Smart Padala handles about a third of domestic remittances and will soon expand its business to foreign remittances,” Pangilinan had said. – Rappler.com