Cashalo reaching out to unbanked Filipinos

Gokongwei-affiliated fintech Cashalo has helped over a million unbanked Filipinos build financial identity after one year of operations, harnessing proprietary technology to promote financial inclusion.

One year after its launch, the Cashalo app—which uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and antifraud algorithms to analyze a mix of traditional and nontraditional data to score “credit-invisible” people—has been downloaded to over three million phones and served over 1.3 million Filipinos.

Fintech refers to new technology that improves and automates the delivery and use of financial services.

“We are building a new equitable financial services infrastructure that unlocks economic opportunity for millions of unbanked and underserved Filipino consumers and businesses,” Hamilton Angluben, Cashalo general manager, said.

Launched in May 2018 and designed around the principles of inclusion, responsibility, and transparency, the fintech firm seeks to serve the unbanked and the underserved.  To date, some 77 percent of Filipinos have no access to banks and over 90 percent of adults have no access to credit.

Cashalo uses alternative data to help more Filipinos build financial identities using their mobile devices and contribute to the local economy. Such approach to credit scoring “removes unconscious biases and creates a level playing field” for every Filipino who has been “undervalued and ignored by traditional financial institutions,” it said.

Cashacart, its flagship product, is touted as the Philippines’ first and only true offline-to-online (O2O) basket financing solution that enables consumers to shop for a “basket of goods” and pay later via digital credit across Cashalo’s network of over 300 merchant partner locations.