SELANGOR, Malaysia -- AirAsia plans to bring its electronic payments unit BigPay to the Philippines by the fourth quarter of the year, officials said.

BigPay is AirAsia's answer to Tencent's WeChat Pay and Alibaba's Alipay, which allows users to scan and pay using their mobile phones. Both Chinese-backed platforms are available in the country.

AirAsia is finalizing details with its partner bank in the Philippines and BigPay could be launched sometime between October and December, AirAsia Philippines ancillary head Carlo Sanchez told ABS-CBN News.

Launched in Malaysia last January, BigPay charges customers "virtually zero" for transactions, AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters.

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With millions of Filipinos using mobile phones, the country is ripe for e-commerce adoption despite slow internet connections, said Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, whose Ant Financial helped Globe Telecom set up its scan-to-pay service GCash.

BigPay will soon expand loans and remittances abroad at affordable rates to differentiate the brand from its competitors, Fernandes said.

"What drove us to start AirAsia? A lot of people couldn't fly. What drove us to start BigPay? To allow more people to get loans at non-crazy rates," Fernandes said.

"Many of our workers, our passengers are migrant workers that when they transfer their money back to Indonesia, the Philippines, or Malaysia, they are charged a lot of remittance fees. We believe we can do it like our airline tickets: cheaper," he said.