USERS of GCash, the leading mobile wallet in the Philippines, can expect a better and more seamless experience when using their GCash mobile application, after it successfully migrated to a world-class online payment platform that today serves over 1.2 billion users.
Through its partnership with Ant Financial, which runs the world’s biggest digital wallet, GCash was able to deploy the next-generation cloud-based technology called A+, which provides greater security for customers, better service turnaround times, and faster concern resolutions for both consumers and enterprise customers.
“By migrating GCash into the best-in-class platform of Ant Financial, we have successfully boosted our capacity to help accommodate the growing demand for digital financial services in the Philippines. This will provide our customers with a faster, better and more stable experience with the GCash App. As we enter into the new normal, this new technology will allow us to more efficiently promote finance for all,” GCash Chief Technology and Operations Officer Pebbles Sy said.
Rapid scalability
Through the A+ Platform, GCash is now empowered to handle high-volume events, as it employs a cloud-first, microservices architecture with a data storage framework that overcomes traditional limits of monolithic designs.
This technology introduces scalability that allows GCash to easily serve more than 50x its current capacity. All of this translates to a better customer experience during usage spikes as more and more people adopt GCash.
Improved service quality, out-of-the-box data services
The A+ Platform brings with it an expanded set of monitoring and telemetry tools, allowing GCash to prevent issues before they even arise and respond quickly to these also. It likewise allows GCash to implement rapid system changes, empowering it to quickly innovate and iterate on new products and services.
The shift to the A+ Platform also provides GCash with new technologies to better understand its customers through the quick processing of data, making it more responsive to the growing and evolving demands of consumers.
More secure, better risk management
Aside from the boost in capacity, the A+ Platform brings a new risk technology to GCash, adding more layers of security and enhanced risk management capabilities, which allows it to have intelligent risk controls that utilize historical transactions for a more precise and quicker identification of risk.
This means that GCash users and enterprise customers are more secure and protected from account risk-related issues. Alipay, China’s leading lifestyle mobile app, uses the same technology, which has allowed it to recognize and control risks within 100 milliseconds, or four times faster than the blink of an eye.
Overall improvements in user experience
“Today, we are truly seeing a growth in demand and usage, as Filipinos turn to cashless options to safeguard themselves from the pandemic. We at GCash believe that this migration will help us better serve our users and encourage more Filipinos to go cashless. This move is only one of the many enhancements we plan on doing as we continuously improve our services,” Sy said.
The A+ Platform improves the service enablement capacities of GCash, allowing the mobile-first app to create new sets of experiences for its customers. New features would include real-time transaction histories for better finance management, wider payment support options, and tailor-fit experiences and promotions for each GCash user.
GCash has over 20 million users, who enjoy democratized access to different financial tools and services such as savings, credit, insurance, and investments. GCash users can also use their mobile wallets to pay their bills to over 400 billers, transact with more than 75,000 merchants, and transfer funds to over 40 banks.
“With the variety of services that we now have — from mobile wallet to credit, from savings to investments — we are helping more Filipinos participate in the financial landscape, and help them unlock the immense benefits of financial services,” Sy said.
“GCash has been on full work from home set-up since the start of quarantine but we were still able to successfully implement this entire migration activity remotely. In spite of the current COVID-19 situation, having the right technology and a strong engineering team enabled us to still take care of, and improve, the experience of our GCash users. With our mobile-first platform, we are able to bring financial services closer to Filipinos, and this technology upgrade will further help us with that mission,” Sy said.
Globe Fintech Innovations Inc. (Mynt), which operates GCash, is part of the portfolio companies of 917Ventures, the largest corporate incubator in the Philippines wholly-owned by Globe Telecom Inc.
GCash is available for download on the App Store and Google Play. For more information, kindly visit https://www.gcash.com/.
