Online marketplaces and travel sites topped this year’s “Singles’ Day” or “11.11” online shopping event as they were boosted by seamless digital payment options and attractive instant perks, data from digital financial services leader PayMaya revealed. For this year’s Singles’ Day event, card and digital payments volume processed by PayMaya across various online commerce sites jumped 3.5 times from Singles’ Day 2018 — indicating a significant shift in digital payments and online shopping habits of Filipinos.
Similarly, Filipinos who used their PayMaya wallet app to pay for their online purchases during 11.11 also jumped three-fold this year compared with 2018 figures, fueled by its most attractive promo offerings to consumers as well as the convenience of using PayMaya online.
Of the top ten merchants with the most digital payment volume processed by PayMaya during 11.11, seven merchants belonged to the travel category, while two fall under the online marketplaces category. The tenth merchant, meanwhile, belonged to the home furnishing industry.
“Singles’ Day” is an annual online shopping event popularized in China as a way to create a counter-holiday to Valentine’s Day, which is usually reserved for couples. It also marks the start of online shopping for the holiday season.
“Online shopping deals and digital payments are a potent mix for Filipino consumers who prefer convenient buying experiences. The accelerated growth in digital transaction volumes during this year’s Singles’ Day shopping event is proof of this increasing savviness and growing trust in digital payments among Filipinos,” said PayMaya President Shailesh Baidwan.
As more Filipinos adopt digital payments for their everyday needs and as even more merchants offer digital payments acceptance, Baidwan said PayMaya is uniquely positioned to enable both consumers and merchants adapt to increasing digitalization of the Philippine economy.
Currently, PayMaya enables the online payment and acquiring needs of the country’s biggest e-Commerce players through its PayMaya Checkout solution, allowing them to accept VISA, Mastercard, and JCB credit, debit, and prepaid card as well as e-Wallet payments from their consumers.
For consumers, PayMaya offers a mobile wallet app that allows users to instantly acquire a virtual payment card that can be used to pay online, as well as other features such as bank transfers, QR payments, bills payments, and prepaid load top-ups, among many others.
All of these efforts are in support of the government’s goals of increasing the share of digital transactions in the country to 20% by the year 2020, under the National Retail Payment System initiative led bythe Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
PayMaya, the digital financial services arm of Voyager Innovations, is the only financial technology company in the Philippines offering integrated consumer and merchant payment solutions with the widest on-ground branch network. It is the first to give millions of Filipinos an e-wallet that allows them to pay cashless transactions at any time of the day, anywhere in the world, and from any device. It is the financial technology arm of Voyager Innovations, the leading technology company in the country backed by PLDT, KKR, Tencent, World Bank’s IFC and the IFC Emerging Asia Fund.
