GCash taps Pinoy diaspora in global push
GCash is the dominant mobile wallet in the Philippines, widely used for a variety of services such as money transfers, bill payments, microlending and even investments. In its efforts to expand globally, GCash has partnered with leading financial institutions and platforms such as Alipay and Western Union, making it easier for Filipinos abroad to send money home and pay for international goods and services.
Paul Albano, GCash International general manager and a recent recipient of the Mansmith Market Mentors Awards, shares his insights into international expansion, leadership philosophy and the future of digital payments.
Question: You’ve had a successful career at Procter & Gamble (P&G), where you were head of sales. How have those experiences shaped your approach to leading GCash’s international expansion?
Answer: At GCash, our purpose is “Making Filipinos’ everyday lives better.” For GCash International, it is all about serving the needs of the 13 million Filipinos living and working overseas, the 5 million Filipino freelancers based here but taking on jobs from abroad and the 6 million Filipinos traveling overseas per year. We put them at the core of everything we do as we strive to deliver the best possible customer experience to allow them to stay connected to home and be more in control of their finances despite being away from home.
P&G’s focus on winning with consumers—delighting them with a superior product experience end-to-end and, in turn, translating to market growth and leadership—has been a solid foundation for me as I lead GCash International business expansion. Throughout my P&G career, I was fortunate to work on growing established brands and businesses, and fueling white space entries both here and abroad. Looking back, these experiences have been helpful for me as we define and refine our business model and strategies.
Getting to know our target users in depth—their demographics, needs, wants, pain points, habits and behaviors; understanding market and competitive landscape; defining our value proposition and tailor-fitting our products and services; and developing the route to market model and strategies to reach, acquire and retain users are critical to GCash International’s expansion and growth.
In 2024, we launched GCash Overseas in 16 countries where we can account for 80 percent of the overseas Filipino diaspora. Filipinos in these countries can now register their international mobile numbers to GCash and get access to GCash’s suite of products and services as if they were back home. We have also since enabled Global Pay for Filipinos traveling overseas; with this Filipinos can now use their GCash app or GCash card to pay for their transactions abroad and enjoy low foreign exchange conversion and zero service fees.
Q: How do you approach mentoring and building high-performance teams, especially in a fast-growing company like GCash?
A: GCash attracts and recruits the best talent in the market to support our growth and expansion. Each GCash employee brings skills, experiences and competencies that create and add value to support our purpose, strategies and action plans. Our seven core values help shape our culture, which, for me, is the cornerstone of any high-performing organization. As the GCash International business and organization grow, creating a high-performance team will continue to be a journey, grounded on collectively building a culture that is rooted on our purpose and values, and individually, on what each team member brings to make our plans and executions bigger and better.
It is in the same note that I anchor my approach to mentoring. Before I agree to mentor someone, I need to be clear on what value I bring to the individual to make him or her better. As such, knowing the mentee is critical—purpose, career and/or personal aspirations, strengths and opportunities and what he or she would want to achieve out of the mentorship relationship. Since mentorship is a relationship, there has to be a fit between mentor and mentee for it to be productive. It is a commitment that requires time and effort; and is two-way and reciprocal—as a mentor, I seek to learn from my mentees and I am as invested as they are in this partnership.
Q: GCash is the dominant mobile wallet in the Philippines, but you’re essentially starting from scratch in foreign markets. What are some of the unique challenges you’ve faced in promoting and scaling GCash internationally?
A: As we expand to serve Filipinos overseas, we anchor on the strengths of GCash here at home: our user penetration with over 94 million Filipinos having used GCash; our ubiquity in the market with over 6 million merchants and social sellers connected to the GCash app; and our strong brand equity—with a best in class net promoter score of 92 percent, Filipinos trust us for their everyday transactions. Leveraging these, though, does not automatically translate to immediate acquisition, adoption and usage for Filipinos overseas as we face challenges across:
1. Brand awareness: There is a considerable number of overseas Filipino migrants living outside for a long period of time who do not know of GCash or may just have heard of us from their family members back home, but do not see a need for it.
2. Regulatory requirements: As part of our KYC (know your customer) process, we require our customers to show proof that they are Filipino to get their account fully verified. We have noted drop-offs at registration due to lack of Philippine IDs, particularly in cases of OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) whose employers hold their passports throughout their employment period and dual citizens whose passports have expired or they have yet to acquire passports.
3. Inertia: Mirroring the Philippines, we need to make GCash a part of overseas Filipinos’ daily lives. This will take time and habituation as most of them have existing practices and solutions to manage their finances back home, like sending money or paying for their household expenses.
Q: OFWs are a key demographic for GCash. From your perspective, who exactly are the OFWs, and what are some key characteristics or behaviors that define this group?
A: This is a primary target segment user for GCash Overseas. About 2 million leave the Philippines every year to work abroad, most of them separated from their families in search of better opportunities for themselves and their loved ones. We take pride that they are recognized worldwide for their skills and commitment to their work. They are considered modern day heroes with their remittances equivalent to 9 percent of the Philippine gross domestic product, but they remain an underserved segment of our society, with huge opportunities in making their lives easier and better.
The OFW we serve is the construction engineer in the United Arab Emirates who is also building his own house for his family back home. It’s the caregiver in Italy who takes on extra jobs to send her three children to school in elementary, high school and college. It’s the nurse in the United States who has invested part of her salary in a condominium unit back home to rent out. It’s the seafarer who takes on overtime not just to keep himself busy and be less homesick, but also to get extra income to pay for his uncle’s hospital bills, apart from his own family’s day-to-day expenses. And there are many more other OFWs across industries and countries, each with their own purpose that we in GCash International aim to serve with a frictionless experience to allow them to stay connected to home and be more in control of their finances behind the convenience of our app.
With GCash Overseas, OFWs can pay for monthly utilities, school tuition fees, real estate amortization, hospital bills and many more, with over 2,000 billers enrolled in the app. They can also better plan and budget their remittances by sending exact amounts directly to individuals when needed, as sending GCash to GCash is real-time, safe and free. They can also open a savings account within the app to save some of their earnings when their employment contract expires. We aspire to create GCash Overseas stories as we work on our use cases to be a part of the OFW’s lives, and make it easier and better.
Q: With your expertise in sales, how does GCash approach customer acquisition and retention in international markets?
A: We approach it the same way it has worked for us here in the Philippines. We are grounded on who our customers are, where they are located, what their needs and pain points are, as well as their current sending habits and behaviors and how we will be able to make theirs and their families’ everyday lives better.
Our value proposition of connection, control and convenience drives both acquisition and retention behind regular usage. On connection, we leverage the strong organic pull into GCash from their family and friends back home to send money through GCash, and supplement this with on-the-ground in-market campaigns in partnership with Filipino organizations and communities, our Philippine embassies and consulate offices and Filipino businesses and establishments. On control and convenience, we highlight our hero use cases within the app like paying bills, sending money, savings that the OFW can now do without being reliant on others. In the US, United Kingdom and Europe, OFWs can even link their bank accounts and cash in directly into their GCash wallets, mirroring the same experience back home for ease and convenience of use. Our thrust is to make GCash a part of everyday life, with our use cases solving their needs and pain points.
