GCash's profit passes P16 billion in its first results as a listed company: loans are now the money machine, as 7.8 million Filipinos borrow

How much is GCash making? Its parent company Mynt reported net income of 16.45 billion pesos for the nine months to September 2026, up 17 percent from 14.02 billion pesos a year earlier, in its first results since listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange, The Philippine Star reported. Revenue rose 12 percent to 67.08 billion pesos.

The headline growth hides a shift in what GCash really is. Its traditional payments business shrank slightly, while lending surged. GCash is becoming one of the largest consumer lenders in the Philippines, and its results show both the profits and the risks of that transformation at a time when inflation and a weak peso are squeezing Filipino households.

Lending has become the growth engine

Digital financial services revenue rose 38 percent to 29.1 billion pesos, driven by the growth of GCash's loan book. Credit revenue alone increased 39 percent to 28.55 billion pesos. The active borrower base reached 7.8 million as of September, about 19 percent of monthly active users, and the loan portfolio grew 43 percent to 79.28 billion pesos.

That makes GCash one of the main sources of credit for millions of Filipinos, many of whom have limited access to bank loans. Products range from short term cash loans to buy now pay later and credit lines that can be used inside the app. Because GCash sees users' transaction histories, it can assess borrowers who may lack formal credit records.

By contrast, payment solutions revenue fell 2 percent to 37.98 billion pesos. Payments remain GCash's largest revenue line and the reason people open the app, but the economics are now driven by what happens after the payment: borrowing, and to a smaller degree saving and investing.

The cost of growth

Lending brings risk. Mynt's direct costs rose 21 percent to 18.45 billion pesos, as a bigger loan book meant larger provisions for bad loans. GCash's credit loss provisions jumped 28 percent to 12.29 billion pesos, and funding costs for loans climbed 33 percent to 1.38 billion pesos.

Provisions growing more slowly than the loan book is a reasonable sign, but the scale is significant: setting aside more than 12 billion pesos in nine months shows that a meaningful share of borrowers struggle to repay. The economic backdrop is not helping, with Philippine growth slowing to 2.1 percent in the third quarter, the weakest since the pandemic, as we reported in our analysis of the Philippine slowdown and BSP rate hikes.

Wealth management was the weak spot. Revenue from investments, insurance and savings products fell 7 percent to 546.2 million pesos. Mynt said Filipinos are putting less into such products as hot inflation and a weak peso shrink their buying power, a clear sign that households are prioritising spending and borrowing over saving.

GCash started as a way to pay. Its results show it is becoming a way to borrow, and the next test is whether its 7.8 million borrowers can keep paying back in a slowing economy.

How big GCash has become

The scale is remarkable. GCash processed 15.15 trillion pesos in transactions in the nine months to September and is used every month by 42.1 million Filipinos, about 57 percent of the country's adult population. That reach makes it the largest financial technology company in the Philippines and one of the most important in Southeast Asia.

In October Mynt completed its listing on the main board of the Philippine Stock Exchange, raising a record 60.9 billion pesos in its initial public offering. We covered the deal in our report on GCash's record Philippine IPO. These nine month numbers are the first financial results investors have seen since the shares began trading.

Competition is growing. Maya is pursuing its own listing plans, digital banks such as GoTyme and Tonik are winning customers, and remittance and stablecoin players are building links into GCash, from Coinbase payouts through Thunes to cross border transfer apps. GCash's scale gives it a lead, but the market is far from closed.

The numbers behind the numbers

A few simple calculations show how GCash's business has changed. Digital financial services, which is mostly lending, now produces about 43 percent of Mynt's revenue, 29.1 billion pesos out of 67.08 billion, while payments produce about 57 percent. If current trends continue, lending could become the larger revenue line within a couple of years.

The average loan is small. Dividing the 79.28 billion peso portfolio by 7.8 million active borrowers gives roughly 10,000 pesos per borrower, consistent with short term consumer credit rather than mortgages or business loans. Small loans to many people spread risk, but they also mean GCash is lending to households that may have thin financial buffers when prices rise.

The cost of that risk is visible. Credit loss provisions of 12.29 billion pesos equal about 43 percent of the 28.55 billion pesos of credit revenue. In other words, for every 100 pesos GCash earned from lending, it set aside about 43 pesos for loans it expects may not be repaid. That ratio, more than any headline profit figure, is the one investors will track as the economy slows.

What investors and users should watch

For investors, the key questions are about credit quality and growth balance. The points to watch over the coming quarters include:

• whether loan growth stays strong without a sharp rise in bad loans
• whether provisions keep growing more slowly than the loan book
• whether payments revenue stabilises after a 2 percent decline
• how funding costs evolve if the BSP raises rates again
• whether wealth products recover as inflation eases

For users, GCash's shift toward lending makes borrowing easy, which can help in emergencies but can also lead to debt problems if loans are used to cover everyday expenses. Comparing interest rates and fees, and borrowing only what can be repaid, matters more as living costs rise.

For the Philippines, GCash's results are a snapshot of a financial system in transition: millions of people moving from cash to digital wallets, and from informal lending to app based credit. How regulators handle that shift will shape both consumer protection and financial inclusion.

GCash's first results as a listed company confirm its dominance and show where its profits now come from: lending to millions of Filipinos. With growth slowing and prices high, the next few quarters will show whether that model is as resilient as it is profitable.