E-wallet is boss as PayMaya eyes P1-T annual transactions

The PayMaya digital wallet expects transaction volumes flowing through its platforms to hit P1 trillion per year starting 2023, according to chief operating officer Paolo Azzola.

This comes as the company, owned by Voyager Innovations Inc. and backed by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and PLDT Inc., lures more users to its cashless platform and partners with more businesses for payments processing.

Azzola said PayMaya currently handled several billions of dollars in annual transactions. He added PayMaya was targeting around 40 million users by 2022.

“What’s driving the trajectory is the fact that we have a very large focus on our consumer business,” Azzola told reporters as PayMaya launched a new marketing campaign and enhanced features on its mobile app.

He said bulk of their transactions were still on the consumer side. But PayMaya also generates a significant amount of business from enterprise customers.

According to Azzola, the company corners about 60 percent of payments processing in online shopping.

Partnerships with business establishments were also increasing as Azzola noted that PayMaya would end the year with 80,000 merchant partners.

One of PayMaya’s largest competitors is GCash, controlled by Globe Telecom and Chinese payments giant Ant Financial Services Group.

But Azzola said the Philippines still presented plenty of opportunities for growth.

He cited the vast majority of Filipinos who did not have access to traditional sources of financial services. He said some 99 percent of businesses in the country also “do not have any kind of presence in the digital or electronics space.”