PayMaya for Enterprise, GCash for Peers

A week ago, I was asked to judge an online pitch competition for communications students, and during intermissions, I heard a commercial by PayMaya (one of the sponsors of the event) referring to it as “too big to be no. 2”. It got me very curious. Has PayMaya conceded the e-Wallet war against GCash?

I would not believe it at first so I Googled a bit and actually found a number of press releases, many of which are actually using the hashtag “#TooGoodToBeNo.2“. So yes, PayMaya is admitting they’re just 2nd to GCash and they’re even publicizing it. That’s brave.

There were a lot of stories on blogs and traditional media about #TooGoodToBeNo.2 between November to December 2021 and the slant was that despite it being just the 2nd most popular e-Wallet, it had the most complete features.

As of today, the PayMaya app has 613,645 downloads in the Google Play Store while GCash has 1,021,545.

This validates some of the observations I’ve had for the last two years. For micro-transactions such as peer-to-peer, it’s almost always GCash. For small merchants like the Potato Corner across the street, it’s GCash. Even the roving fruit and vegetable cart that passes by the house every morning, kuya accepts GCash. And for the last 14 months, I’ve bought (commonly referred to in the circles as “mined”) over 600 pots of plants, and the majority of them were paid via GCash. It’s followed by BPI, then BDO but not once I was asked to pay via PayMaya.

So yes admittedly, the dominance of GCash in the market is undeniable.

On the other hand, many of the big stores I’ve been to are now using PayMaya POS terminals to process credit card transactions.

Been to Home Depot, Wilcon and I think even in Ikea the last time we went there — all of them were using PayMaya.

PayMaya as a POS payment gateway accepts Visa, Mastercard, GrabPay, WeChatPay, JCB and QRPh. That’s more than enough to basically attract many merchants.

It’s an interesting turn-out and all of these happened during the pandemic. Fintech is still a big space and we’re not saying GCash wins the masses and PayMaya wins the merchants.

It would be interesting to see what each would do to eat into the other’s market.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

12 Comments

PJ says:

3 years ago

Unfortunately GCash does not provide API for independent developers. It would be cool to see private vendo machines with available gcash payment option.
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Lim says:

3 years ago

PayMaya POS were probably provided for free for initial period and would require subscrption fees after some time
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Alexander Soriano says:

3 years ago

GCash’s AMEX tend to cover merchants that won’t accept either GCash’s and Paymaya’s virtual Visa or Mastercard. It was a lifesaver especially when Grab only accepted cards for online payment. Sadly, some merchants don’t accept AMEX but they usually accept the virtual Visa/Mastercard of either GCash or Paymaya so it evens out.
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Lim says:

3 years ago

BDO POS Terminals accepts AMEX, Diner’s Club, UnionPay aside from Mastercard, Visa and JCB

jjas says:

3 years ago

This article is really true.
Almost all of the POS machines I’ve encountered are using paymaya POS.
I wondered if gcash had entered the POS for enterprise early on.
But for me, If only PLDT-Smart had not mismanaged it, as what they usually do… until now (coughs buying Digitel-SUN then slowly killing it) they should have not changed it’s name to Paymaya.
Remember the time when they were the first to launch Smart Money.
If Only they retained it and made it what it should be today then that might be another game changer in the industry.
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Abe Olandres says:

3 years ago

Globe used to do POS as well, sometime in 2016. It was called Globe Charge and works like a dongle that you plug into your phone. They discontinued it.

Carl says:

3 years ago

We’re almost there! Did a GCash transaction on a Paymaya POS at an establishment a few months, which bewildered me.
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Louie Diangson says:

3 years ago

I think this is because of the BSP’s QR Ph P2M? Kaso parang di pa listed si GCash sa list ni BSP. Sana umabot na tayo dun.
Abe Olandres says:

3 years ago

Looking forward to it!

Paul says:

3 years ago

Sadly both Gcash and Paymaya don’t work for buying books on Gumroad and a few other US-based e-commerce sites. Apparently they don’t trust ewallets and virtual debit from PH yet, they only accept credit card.
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Carl says:

3 years ago

GCash has a US-based AMEX Virtual card that you can use for free, you just need to activate it on the linked accounts section. I use that mainly for my US purchases.

If it still doesn’t work, connect your Paymaya or GCash AMEX virtual card to Paypal (If the website supports it) and use Paypal for websites that have that payment option. That wrked for me when I bought something in the US too.
Abe Olandres says:

3 years ago

Yes, the only time I use PayMaya was for the virtual credit card.

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