Stock trading in GCash begins with crucial test run

GCash and stock brokerage house AB Capital Securities Inc. launched a month-long dry run for GStocks PH before allowing over 70 million users of the app to trade equities listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) by March this year.

GCash, the mobile wallet owned by the Ayala Group’s Globe Telecom and Chinese payments giant Ant Group, secured the go-signal from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to begin in-app testing for the GStocks PH feature.

The test phase will be open to select users, who will be able to register and apply for a trading account with AB Capital, top up their GCash wallet, and begin trading Philippine-listed stocks.

A GCash spokesperson said the test run would begin this month and would be monitored by the SEC “until we go full-scale in March.”

“The SEC has always been supportive of new and emerging business concepts, especially with new innovations in financial technology. The commission will do its part to ensure that the regulatory environment will allow such innovations to flourish, while remaining cautious and vigilant for the sake of consumer and investor protection,” SEC Commissioner Kelvin Lester Lee said in a statement.

The dry run comes after PSE, GCash and AB Capital signed their initial partnership last September with the goal of growing the country’s small base of stock market investors.

“Partnerships with trading platforms give us an opportunity to empower Filipinos from all walks of life, so that they, too, can start their investment journey easily and confidently with the stellar capabilities we offer at GCash, and of course the support of both the SEC and PSE,” GCash CEO and president Martha Sazon said in the statement.

PSE president Ramon Monzon previously said the GCash partnership could lure as many as nine million new investors in five years from about 1.6 million investors last year.

Mobile wallets such as GCash and rival Maya have allowed millions of Filipinos to access traditional financial services even without a bank account. Still, market observers doubted the lofty targets for GStocks PH due to lack of adequate investor education in the Philippines.

Monzon said a way to meet targets was to allow investors to buy a fraction of a share. —Miguel R. Camus INQ