After the IPO party, GCash comes for 5-6 lending next

Raphael Reyes/Rappler

'There’s money in serving them,' says Mynt president and CEO Martha Sazon, as she and her team try to convince investors that lending to underserved Filipinos could fuel GCash’s next wave of growth

AT A GLANCE

• GCash, with 41.5 million monthly active users, aims to expand its lending services, targeting the informal lending market, which is a significant source of potential borrowers.
• Lending currently accounts for 35.8% of Mynt's adjusted revenue, and the company plans to allocate 60% of its IPO proceeds to enhance its loan portfolio, despite facing risks associated with non-performing loans (NPLs).
• Mynt's IPO has generated strong demand, valuing the company at approximately P442 billion, with expectations for continued growth in user monetization and lending profitability.

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MANILA, Philippines – With GCash’s stock market debut around the corner, it has another target in sight: the “5-6” lender.

That was one way executives of GCash parent Mynt tried to convince brokers and investors that the homegrown e-wallet still has plenty of room to grow during an invite-only investor briefing on October 6.

GCash already has 41.5 million monthly active users – roughly four times that of its closest competitor – but only 7.5 million are active borrowers. According to Mynt’s executives, growing the latter number is the goldmine.

“We still see a lot of opportunity to grow,” Tony Isidro, president and CEO of Mynt’s lending arm Fuse Financing, said. “We see informal lending still as the biggest competitor for us, as the biggest source of business on the B2C (business-to-customer) side.”

And it’s a sizable market. According to Frost & Sullivan research commissioned for Mynt’s prospectus, around 40% of Filipino adults with loans relied on informal lending in 2025. That includes borrowing from relatives, employers, pawnshops, and notorious 5-6 lenders, who typically lend P500 and expect P600 back. (READ: ‘5-6’ lending? Symptom of a larger problem)

GCash already has products for this market. Its GLoan Sakto offers loans as small as P100, while Borrow Load lets users borrow as little as P20 for prepaid use.

“If you look at our economic base, more than 90% are from economic class lower C2DE,” Mynt president and CEO Martha Sazon said. “The unique profile of these customers, they are like the sachet type of customers. They may not have lumpsum money at one time that they can dispense with, but they also dispense money for their every day lives.”

“There’s money in serving them,” Sazon added. (READ: [Vantage Point] Holiday dividend or market coal? What GCash could deliver by Christmas)

While GCash is best known as an e-wallet and payments service, it’s already made plenty of money from lending. Lending already accounts for 35.8% of Mynt’s adjusted revenue, compared with 63.2%, or P50.34 billion, from its core payments business. By the first half of 2026, lending’s share had grown further to 41.8%, while its total loan portfolio reached P70.5 billion. And revenue is growing too, bringing in P28.52 billion in 2025 with a two-year CAGR of 67.1%.

Now, Mynt wants to pump more money into lending. Around 60% of the net proceeds from newly issued IPO shares will go toward expanding its loan portfolio over the next one to three years, according to the company’s prospectus.

Dealing with NPLs

But making loans is considerably riskier than processing payments, especially given GCash’s customer base. Mynt’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio stood at 4.9% in June 2026, although it had reached as high as 9.2% in 2023 and 7.5% in 2025.

And bad loans aren’t cheap. Mynt recorded P12.62 billion in provisions for credit losses in 2025, equivalent to 44.3% of its lending revenue that year. It booked another P7.93 billion in provisions in just the first half of 2026.

“As we move closer to our vision of financial inclusion and bringing more customers from informal lending, from 5-6 to formal [lending] – which, expectedly, involves some level of risk – we do expect NPL at [a certain level],” Isidro said, saying he was comfortable with bad loans remaining within single-digit levels.

GCash is hoping that technology can help keep defaults manageable. Its AI-powered GScore uses transaction histories to assess creditworthiness, while an AI voicebot called GINA already calls borrowers with payment reminders. 

Beyond lending, Mynt also wants to expand into merchant services, investments, insurance, and overseas markets. There’s plenty to keep its executives busy, especially with net income growth slowing to 7.3% year-on-year in the first half of 2026.

Mynt’s IPO has no doubt drawn strong demand, with the offer already oversubscribed. But at P6.60 per share, investors are being asked to value Mynt at roughly P442 billion, or 25.7 times its 2025 earnings. That is higher than the recent earnings multiples of fintech giants like PayPal and Brazil’s Nubank, according to Unicapital Securities.

“Mynt’s valuation already incorporates expectations of continued growth. Its premium to some established fintech peers would need to be supported by sustained user monetization, profitable lending expansion, and disciplined credit costs,” the brokerage firm said in a recent commentary.

Whether that promise can sustain investors’ enthusiasm beyond the IPO will become clearer when GCASH begins trading on Tuesday, October 20. – Rappler.com