By Fil C. Sionil
It’s a wrap! And it’s oversubscribed!
The initial public offering (IPO) of Mynt Inc., the parent company of e-wallet GCash, is moving closer to its listing date at the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Yes, Virginia, the IPO subscription period closed Monday, and Mynt management is prepping up for this Tuesday’s listing under the ticker symbol GCASH.
That done, the question now going around the marketplace is: what’s next for Mynt and GCash?
This nosy parker gathered that something is brewing across the Ayala Triangle. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, as they say. The brewing revolves around the “great unbundling” as the main ingredient. Chill, Virginia. I know you’re itching to hear.
Mynt, from what I’ve heard, is now looking beyond transactional volume. It’s not further expansion, but rather a radical retreat to its roots. “Unbundling” is the operative word.
That’s right, Virginia. On the drawing board is the possibility of spinning off certain auxiliary services of the country’s dominant fintech player.
In the hyper-competitive world of financial technology, GCash has been christened the “super app” and long treated as fintech’s holy grail, with services offered at the click of a button.
GCash has already captured the vast majority of the country’s transactional economy. Remittance and settlements got GCash into every Filipino’s pocket, and the brand has even become a verb: “i-GCash mo na lang.”
Since its launch some 22 years ago, GCash has evolved, transforming from a simple e-wallet into an expansive fintech ecosystem. It offers an array of services, from micro-loans (GLoan or GGives) and investments (GFund or GStocks) to insurance (GInsure).
All these supplementary services can be transacted at your fingertips. GCash has masterfully navigated and performed the playbook of a super app, building on its core competencies of remittance, settlements, and money transfer.
A fintech market player explained that prevailing ecosystems force fintech firms to inevitably reach a crossroads where the vehicle that brought them to dominance is “no longer the best vehicle to take them to the moon.”
Unbundling or spinning off its supplementary services is the natural path to follow. “To maximize the next phase of its digital revolution, the super app must eventually learn to let its components fly on their own,” rationalized an industry insider.
On one hand, this would allow GCash’s parent company to retain its position as the ultimate consumer gateway. On the other hand, unbundling would free Mynt’s credit and wealth engines, transforming them into agile, aggressively valued market leaders.
My research showed that unbundling is not a unique proposition for companies under the Ayala Group. Records show that Globe Telecom and other Ayala subsidiaries once operated internal shared service units to manage auxiliary functions like human resources, IT systems integration, and administrative workflows.
To optimize these operational arms, they transformed the auxiliary services into independent, dedicated corporate entities under the Asticom Group of Companies. Then in 2021, Asti Business Services, Inc. became the tech-enabled shared services and outsourcing arm handling HR, finance, customer relationship management, and administrative functions.
I fully agree with the views expressed by my fintech source that by separating these auxiliary tech services from core telecommunications competencies, the parent companies transformed a standard internal cost center into a highly profitable, standalone revenue generator.
As the wheels of business continue to churn around the plan for GCash to spin off its secondary financial services and refocus strictly on its core remittance, money transfer, and settlement infrastructure, the possibility of it losing its title as an “all-in-one super app” hangs in the balance.
But then again, there’s also the possibility that the spin-off could unlock massive strategic, operational, and financial gains. A leaner GCash could turn out to be a far more potent fintech beast.
Let’s see how this develops.
Talk back to me at sionil731@gmail.com
