GCash has evolved from a loss-making digital wallet into a highly profitable financial technology platform, illustrating the scale Southeast Asian fintech companies can reach, according to Warburg Pincus executive Vishal Mahadevia.
The Philippine digital wallet had about 15 million monthly active users when Warburg Pincus invested around 2021 and was burning roughly $25 million a year, Mahadevia, the firm’s Head of Asia Private Equity and Global Co-Head of Financial Services, said at the Asia PE-VC Summit in Singapore organized by DealStreet Asia.
GCash now has roughly three times as many monthly active users, while transaction volumes have increased several-fold and annual EBITDA has grown to about $400 million, he said.
The platform’s potential initial public offering could give investors a rare view of how Southeast Asia’s digital financial businesses are valued in public markets.
Globe Telecom, one of GCash’s major shareholders, said earlier this month that the Philippine Stock Exchange had approved an application for a listing of up to 92.3 billion pesos ($1.47 billion).
Mahadevia said GCash’s development was part of a broader pattern among Southeast Asian fintech businesses that have been able to build substantial operations despite the region’s fragmented markets.
He also cited Vietnam’s MoMo, another Warburg Pincus-backed digital payments company, which he said had moved from being a “money burning company” to a “tremendously profitable” business with triple-digit million-dollar EBITDA.
The examples challenge the notion that individual Southeast Asian markets are too small to support fintech companies with meaningful scale, Mahadevia said.
“The argument you hear… is Southeast Asia is a bunch of countries that’s small. Can you get scale?” he said. “These are real watershed examples of companies that can be built. It’s exciting.”
For investors, Mahadevia said a GCash listing could also demonstrate that large Southeast Asian businesses can eventually access public markets and generate liquidity for their backers.
“You get these watershed moments like this, where people realize you can exit and you have scale,” he said.
The timing, valuation and structure of the GCash IPO were not disclosed during the session.
