GCash’s second-biggest owner and tech provider: China’s Ant (Alipay) Group

First of Two Parts

THE irony is inescapable. Last Tuesday, Senator Risa Hontiveros and ten House representatives, mostly Red party-list congressmen but including Leila de Lima, filed a resolution urging President Marcos to kick out Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan, a move that could eventually lead to severance of our diplomatic and even business relations with that emerging superpower.

On that very day, the biggest initial public offering in our stock market’s history, which generated P61 billion in new funds for GCash, was launched. President Marcos himself rang the ceremonial bell to start trading. Ambassador Jing should have been there, for reasons that will be obvious in this column.

The company that launched the IPO: Mynt, Inc., which owns GCash, the country’s biggest mobile payments provider. Chinese companies under the Ant Group – spun off as the international arm by the nearly legendary Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, whose firms, however, are now under tight supervisory control of the Chinese government – are Mynt’s second-biggest stockholders, their total shares of 33 percent to 38 percent nearly as huge as the Ayala conglomerate’s 40 percent. Not only that: GCash’s technology provider since 2017 has been the Ant Group’s Alipay, without which it wouldn’t have overtaken its competitor PayMaya.

GCash had 5 million registered users in 2017, while PayMaya (now just Maya) had 8 million. After the Chinese companies invested in GCash in 2017 and provided the payments technology of Alipay, its subscribers rocketed to 94 million users by 2025, nearly double Maya’s 50 million. Alipay is the biggest mobile payments company in China, having over a billion subscribers.

Most people saw GCash as a success story of, and a company of, the Ayalas, the country’s premier Spanish mestizo clan that traces its roots way back to Spanish colonialism. More knowledgeable people of course were aware that the giant Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi has provided much financial muscle for GCash since 2004, when the firm was set up.

However, what the Ayalas appear to have kept from public knowledge is the entry in 2017 of the Chinese companies of Alipay/Jack Ma-linked firms: Ant International Technologies, Advanced New Technologies, and AI Vision Investment. In all of Mynt’s reports and even in its IPO Prospectus, these firms’ nationality was reported as “Singaporean,” since laws of that island state allow any registered firm to be identified as Singaporean.

Ayala’s 2024 integrated report estimated its total economic interest in Mynt at 17 percent, through Globe Capital Ventures, which is wholly owned by Globe Telecom, and AM 50 Ventures, half-owned by Ayala Corp. and the Japanese Mitsubishi Corp. However, Globe Telecom is not entirely owned by the Ayalas. Its common shares, according to its 2025 General Information Sheet, are 22 percent held by Singapore’s Singtel, while Ayala Corp. holds 25 percent.

Ant

These figures indicate that the Ant companies’ combined 32.4 percent total stake was almost equal to Globe’s 33.8 percent. The 50-50 Ayala–Mitsubishi joint venture, AM 50 Ventures, has another 13 percent, increasing Globe’s holdings (50 percent of 13 percent) to 40 percent.

However, the Chinese companies may have a bigger stake in Mynt. An investment company named ASP Philippines has a 6 percent stake in Mynt. ASP is a wholly owned firm of the New York-based Bow Wave Capital. A January 2021 report by Global Venturing described Bow Wave as “Alibaba-affiliated” and said its mandate was to invest in Ant Group and Alibaba partners and portfolio companies. US SEC filings identify two Bow Wave-managed funds named BW-ANT LP and BW Ant International LP.

If Bow Wave’s 6 percent stake in Mynt is in reality held by investment funds of Ant International, the Chinese technology conglomerate’s shares in Mynt would be 38 percent, just a bit less than the Ayalas’ 40 percent.

However, as the technology provider for GCash, whose business depends on technology, the Ant/Alipay Chinese group would have commanding control of GCash.

Mynt’s prospectus openly acknowledges the technological relationship. It describes collaboration with Ant International to develop GCash’s “financial technology infrastructure and use the Alipay+ global wallet gateway for cross-border payments.”

Technology

It is not only GCash that runs on Chinese firms’ technology. GCash competitor Maya had scrambled to take in Chinese payments technology firms after GCash did. Tencent Holdings, the Chinese technology company behind WeChat Pay, bought 15 percent of Maya’s shares in October 2018, about 19 months after GCash took in the Alipay firms. Ant Group’s Alipay has 55 percent of China’s mobile payments subscribers while Tencent’s WeChat Pay has 39 percent.

The remarkable irony is that while noisy officials like Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro as well as Senators Hontiveros and Francis Pangilinan have been hysterically claiming that China is the Philippines’ “existential threat” – Chinese firms, because of their technology, have become embedded in the everyday economic lives of Filipinos. Millions use GCash and Maya without knowing that among their second-biggest owners and technology providers are Chinese whom the likes of Teodoro and Coast Guard official Jay Tarriela, Senator Hontiveros and her writer Ronald Llamas want kicked out of the country.

The larger story is the transformation of global financial technology and the remarkable role Chinese enterprises have played in that transformation, while most people still think China has become the second-biggest economy in the world because of its cheap manufactured products.

For decades, the world’s dominant financial innovations were associated with American and European banks and payment companies. Visa, Mastercard and later PayPal became internationally recognized names. But the rapid spread of smartphones and electronic commerce created opportunities for new companies that were not constrained by traditional banking infrastructure. Both GCash and Maya started using US technology firms, but later found the Chinese Alipay and Tencent much better.

China’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay emerged as major players in this new environment. Their success came from integrating payments with digital commerce, communications and other everyday services. These systems allowed businesses and consumers to transact electronically on an enormous scale.

Breakthroughs

Mobile payment systems have emerged as one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the 21st century, transforming not merely how people pay for goods and services but how entire economies function. By enabling money to move instantaneously between individuals, businesses and financial institutions, they have drastically reduced the costs, delays and inconveniences associated with cash transactions.

Small and medium-sized merchants who previously depended entirely on physical currency now accept electronic payments without expensive equipment, while millions of people without bank accounts can participate in the formal financial system. Mobile payments have accelerated the growth of electronic commerce, expanded markets for small businesses, facilitated remittances and made financial transactions more transparent and traceable.

GCash and Maya are not merely innovative businesses. The economic contribution of mobile payments extends far beyond the convenience of paying through a smartphone. By reducing transaction costs and allowing money to circulate more efficiently, these systems improve commercial productivity and enable businesses to serve customers beyond their immediate geographic markets.

GCash has 6 million registered merchants here while Maya has 1 million, overtaking traditional credit cards. In terms of users, 3 to 5 percent of adults are credit-card users, while GCash and Maya account for an amazing 80 percent of adults now.

The two firms, along with new entrants such as the Gokongweis’ GoTyme, are even pushing the expansion of digital commerce. One no longer needs a credit card, which only the middle and upper classes have, to buy from Lazada. Lazada receives payments through GCash and Maya. I myself was astounded by GCash penetration when I told my caddy two years ago that I was sorry I didn’t have change to give her a tip. She said I could pay her through GCash.

Velocity

One of the less appreciated economic contributions of mobile payment systems is their potential to increase the velocity of money – the rate at which money circulates through an economy to finance economic activity – which contributes to the growth of the economy.

Instead of remaining idle while individuals and businesses wait to withdraw cash, deposit checks or complete bank transfers, funds received through digital wallets can immediately be used for further purchases and payments. In short, they improve the efficiency with which an economy uses its available money.

Would the likes of Teodoro and Hontiveros really want to fight China, which wouldn’t fire a single bullet against us, but could merely ask Ant and Tencent to leave the Philippines? The Ayalas, Maya’s ultimate CEO Manuel Pangilinan, the Gokongweis of GoTyme and the over one million users of GCash and Maya should lobby Marcos to fire Teodoro ASAP. Anyway, he’ll have a comfortable life in Malta*. His intense, inexplicable anti-Chinese rantings threaten our economy.

*Teodoro’s lawyers have not responded for two weeks now to my query whether Mrs. Teodoro and their son have renounced their Maltese citizenship.

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GCash’s second-biggest owner and tech provider: China’s Ant (Alipay) Group
Source: Breaking News PH