MANILA - GCash on Wednesday said it is eyeing to launch a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service this year.

BNPL is a short-term financing service that lets consumers buy items and pay for them at a future date, often interest-free. The payment scheme has become increasingly popular for online purchases in other countries.

Japanese BNPL pioneer Paidy is being acquired for $2.7 billion by global payments giant PayPal, while Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is buying Australian BNPL leader Afterpay for $29 billion.

GCash said the move to BNPL is part of its expanding array of financial services.

The company said its in-house lending service GCredit, already disburses P1 billion worth of loans a month on average, with P15 billion worth disbursed as of June this year.

The Ayala-led fintech said it is also piloting GLoan, a new service that allows qualified users to borrow as much as P25,000, with repayment spread over 12 months.

“The service is doing well and has shown the fastest growing revenue for its category,” GCash said.

“As a driver of financial inclusion, our objective is clear, and that is to ease the friction being experienced by unbanked and underserved Filipinos,” said Martha Sazon, President and CEO of GCash.

The explosive growth of GCash, which reportedly had 46 million users as of July, is credited for driving the recent surge in the stock price of parent firm Globe Telecom.

• GCash says transactions on platform hit P300 billion a month
• GCash introduces new products, services for 2021

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