“Can a Philippine e-wallet evolve into the country's dominant digital bank and MSME financial OS, in a market still dominated by GCash?”
Started in 2000 as Smart Money — the world's first phone-linked Mastercard. Rebranded as PayMaya in 2016 to position as a consumer e-wallet competing with GCash. The decisive pivot came in 2022 when parent Voyager Innovations rolled out a BSP-licensed digital bank (Maya Bank), consolidated the brand to 'Maya', and raised $210M at $1.4B to fund a full neobank build-out — savings, credit, crypto, MSME lending, and a merchant acquiring stack — making Maya one of two scaled digital-banking players in the Philippines alongside GCash.