Why local payment methods matter in emerging markets like Philippines to onboard more users to Web3?

Philippines is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of 110 million, and a rapidly growing economy with a current GDP of USD 440 billion. The country has a young and tech-savvy population, deep into gaming, and has a global crypto adoption index rank of #2 as per Chainalysis 2022 index.

The penetration of credit cards in the country is low at less than 8% with only 8.6 million credit & charge cards in circulation. While debit cards are more in number, they are primarily used for cash withdrawal or utility purchases. Either of these is unsuited for digital assets onramp and offramp in the country

By contrast, alternate payment methods are much more popular in the Philippines with GCash, Instapay, ShopeePay and PayMaya widely prevalent across the local population. GCash is an all-in-app and the most popular payment method in the country with over 30 million users, nearly 4-times those that use credit cards.

TransFi is focused on fiat-to-crypto onramp and offramp in emerging markets, in particular Asia, with the widest suite of local payment methods in local currencies, 80%+ conversion rates, and with low fees. An integration with TransFi enables exchanges, wallets and DeFi protocols to offer their users the ability to buy and sell crypto with all the popular payment methods in the Philippines including GCash, PayMaya, Shopeepay, and local banks