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Showing posts from December 14, 2025

Maya vs. GCash: The Billion-Peso Feature That Will Flip the Market

The "Green" Offensive: How Maya Can Topple the Giant While GCash remains the undisputed leader in volume and user base, holding the "habit" of the Filipino people, Maya has quietly built a superior technological foundation. With a full digital banking license, a cleaner UI, and a robust business ecosystem, Maya has the tools to win. However, superior tech does not always beat superior distribution. To bridge the gap, Maya needs a radical shift in strategy focusing on friction reduction, aggressive feature parity, and financial education. Here is the blueprint for Maya to capture the market. 1. The UI/UX Pivot: Radical Simplification Maya wins on aesthetics, but it occasionally loses on utility. For a daily driver app, speed is paramount. Fixing the Bill Payment Friction: Currently, Maya’s bill payment flow is more cumbersome than GCash’s. Requiring users to input a "Due Date" for utilities like water and electricity is an unnecessary friction point that ...

How UnionBank Philippines Built the Most Advanced Credit Card Technology—From Digital-First Banking to Citi’s World-Class Security Systems

UnionBank’s Technology Evolution in the Philippines UnionBank didn’t become a tech-driven bank overnight. It has steadily transitioned from a traditional banking institution to one of the most technology-forward banks in the country , prioritizing digital transformation, cloud infrastructure, automation, and modern risk systems long before many local competitors. Key elements include: Modern Core Banking Focus — Investing early in scalable digital platforms rather than relying on old batch-processing systems. ( The Asian Banker ) Cloud-First Strategy — Moving to cloud-native systems to handle large-scale customer data and digital workloads more securely and flexibly. ( DigiconAsia ) AI and Analytics — Deploying intelligent tools to improve onboarding, risk decisions, fraud monitoring, and customer segmentation. ( The Asian Banker ) These foundations helped UnionBank rapidly scale and innovate in areas such as real-time credit decisions, digital account opening, in-app controls, ...