Here are the highlights of her speech
Editor’s Note: This content is sponsored by GCash and produced by BrandRap, the sales and marketing arm of Rappler. No member of the news and editorial team was involved in the production of this article.
Mobile World Congress is back in full swing, once again bringing the world’s biggest players in the mobile phone industry to the halls of the Fira de Barcelona convention centre. The annual event was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and has also been downsized in recent years.
This year, however, they are pulling out all the stops. And among the technology trailblazers is GCash’s own President and CEO, Martha Sazon, who delivered a keynote address on the third day of the convention.
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Sazon’s session was about New Behaviors for a New Reality, in which she shared the story of how GCash, a company founded in 2004, thrived during the pandemic by providing essential services that made life in quarantine easier. She spoke to Lauren Kunze from Iconiq and Tjodolf Sommestad, President of King (developer of the hit game Candy Crush).
GCash was the only Filipino fintech company at the entire congress, and Sazon was there to share how the superapp is improving millions of lives on multiple fronts, most notably financial inclusion.
Financial inclusion has been a growing concern in the Philippines. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 70% of Filipinos were unbanked, which meant that the majority of Filipinos did not have access to savings accounts, insurance, investments, credit, and other financial services.
By making banking services easier, less intimidating, and more accessible, GCash helped improve those numbers during the pandemic. In 2022, the bank account grew to 56%, of which 76 million have a GCash account.
Aside from giving Filipinos access to an e-wallet, Sazon shared the other services made more accessible through GCash. Users can open a savings account through their GSave without having to physically go to a bank branch and earn up to 12% annual interest, depending on which bank or neobank they choose. Today, one in four banked Filipinos has a GSave account.
Sazon also shared how her investment marketplace GInvest has helped conduct three out of four UITFs in the country and a third of all new insurance policies in 2022 were purchased through the GCash app through GInsure.
Besides empowering users through various financial services, Sazon also shared how they empower their users to help protect the environment through GForest. Here, with every transaction, users collect green energy points that can be used to plant real trees through the app’s partner communities.
GCash also helps with the disbursement of aid for government beneficiaries as well as with the digitization of government accounts.
Sazon ended her speech by renewing the GCash team’s commitment to supporting and empowering more underserved parts of the nation. – Rappler.com
Stream GCash President and CEO Martha Sazon’s full keynote address at Mobile World Congress 2023 here: https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/agenda/session/keynote-7-new-behaviour-for-a-new-reality
