COLLABORATION is emerging as a catalyst that can help Southeast Asia thrive in an increasingly digital global economy, particularly through the deliberate building of a strong startup ecosystem. Venture funding in the region has seen a rebound in 2025, with startups raising $909 million in the first quarter, up 30 percent from the previous quarter.
Furthermore, the Southeast Asia E-commerce Report last year showed fintech remained a dominant force within the digital economy and was expected to surpass $300 billion in gross merchandise value by the end of 2025 in Southeast Asia alone, driven by steady 15-percent year-on-year growth.
By teaming up with regulators, legacy banks, tech giants and nonfinancial companies, fintech startups can push past local roadblocks. This kind of cooperation has quickly transformed the Philippines from a cash-dependent society into a digital-first economy, showing that collaboration can scale businesses faster than operating alone.
In a country where more than a third of adults still lack access to formal financial services, the urgency of this transformation cannot be overstated. Here is how this ecosystem approach is addressing systemic problems and fueling growth across the country.
Breaking down silos for regional scale
Moving away from isolated operations and allowing regionwide testing is a major shift for fintech firms. When a startup operates in a bubble, it usually encounters local regulatory barriers, but collaboration creates standardized pathways for growth.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is driving the adoption of standardized application programming interfaces through its Open Finance initiatives. This means startups no longer need to build custom backend connections from scratch. Instead, they can securely access customer-approved data and use the existing infrastructure of established banks.
The Philippines is also a major participant in the Asean Regional Payment Connectivity network. As a result, local fintech firms are not confined to the domestic market. They can use shared systems to test cross-border payments and remittances across Southeast Asia without setting up costly operations in neighboring countries.
For a nation that sends and receives some of the world’s highest volumes of cross-border remittances, this kind of regional interoperability is not a luxury but a necessity.
Bridging the financial inclusion gap
Financial inclusion remains a major challenge in the Philippines and other emerging markets. The issue is not necessarily unwillingness to use banks, but systemic barriers that keep millions outside the formal economy. Reaching the unbanked across a 7,000-island archipelago is also an infrastructure challenge that no single startup can solve alone.
E-wallets such as Maya and GCash found a workaround to the high cost of building physical bank branches by partnering with established retail networks. They transformed thousands of convenience stores, pawnshops and neighborhood sari-sari stores into cash-in and cash-out agents. These retail touchpoints became entry points to the formal financial system for communities without nearby bank branches.
GCash’s GSave feature is an example of ecosystem synergy. While CIMB Bank provides the banking license, deposit insurance and high-yield interest rates, GCash contributes digital distribution and a large user base. Through this partnership, millions of Filipinos have been able to open formal savings accounts online using only a single ID.
However, even a single ID can present challenges. In the Philippines, one person may hold several IDs with inconsistent formats or spellings, causing onboarding systems designed for standardized records to fail. These are not minor usability issues. They determine whether millions of people can access credit. This is why companies across the ecosystem — from document-processing platforms to identity-verification providers — are investing in tools that reconcile inconsistent ID formats and extract structured data from incomplete paperwork.
Unlocking SME financing
Legacy banks often reject micro, small and medium enterprises because these businesses lack formal credit histories or cannot meet strict collateral requirements. Ecosystem collaboration helps bridge this gap by incorporating alternative data.
Companies such as Maya Business use daily cash flow data from online payment gateways and point-of-sale terminals. Because they can monitor merchant sales in real time, they can quickly approve cash advances or working-capital loans without relying on traditional credit-scoring models.
Startups such as BillEase and First Circle have partnered with logistics providers and e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Lazada to assess MSME creditworthiness using platform reviews, digital sales footprints and shipping volumes. Meanwhile, fintech infrastructure providers such as AND Solutions are equipping lenders with AI-driven credit-scoring tools and loan-origination platforms that allow financial institutions to develop custom models using alternative data.
This type of ecosystem-level infrastructure gives institutional investors greater confidence to lend capital to local businesses that traditional scoring methods might otherwise overlook.
Transforming digital payments
Before the ecosystem became more integrated, transferring money between Philippine wallets and banks was slow, fragmented and costly. Merchants often had to display multiple QR codes at their counters.
Today, through the National Retail Payment System led by the BSP, the industry has adopted the interoperable QR Ph standard. Consumers using participating bank apps can scan a merchant’s GCash or Maya QR code, with payments settling instantly regardless of network.
Philippine payment platforms are also linking directly to regional payment rails to reduce travel and remittance costs. Local e-wallet users can now scan Thailand’s PromptPay or Malaysia’s DuitNow QR codes. This type of bilateral collaboration reduces credit card network fees, enables competitive foreign exchange rates and improves transaction efficiency.
For millions of Filipino families that depend on overseas remittances, these integrations result in tangible savings.
By continuing to prioritize interoperability, secure data sharing and strategic partnerships, the Philippine fintech industry is demonstrating that collaborative infrastructure remains one of the most effective ways to scale innovation, reduce customer acquisition costs and expand financial access. The challenge ahead is sustaining this momentum, but the foundation is already in place.
Allen Xavier is the Philippine country manager at AND Solutions, a tech company responsible for go-to-market strategies. With more than 28 years of professional experience in delivering complex software solutions and 18 years in sales leadership across the Philippines and Asean.
