PH fintech market lagging behind despite pandemic boost — Fitch Solutions

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated mobile banking adoption, but the country’s financial technology market remains “fairly immature,” compared to its neighbors, think tank Fitch Solutions said.

In a report released Thursday, Fitch Solutions said the Philippines needs to step up its mobile banking push as it lags behind neighboring countries with “higher proportions of mobile banking customers and already have more developed fintech infrastructure.”

“As a result, we believe the opportunity for Filipino mobile banking operations to expand outwards to neighboring countries is fairly limited,” it added.

Local digital infrastructure is also “relatively undeveloped,” Fitch Solutions said, burdening not just digital payments, but also the further growth of the e-commerce industry.

Since fixed broadband remains “extremely limited” across the Philippines, e-commerce is now banking on telcos’ aggressive move to enhance mobile broadband connectivity, it said.

Fintech players are seen to take advantage of the more advanced technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence to address the demand caused by the pandemic.