Ayala-owned mobile operator Globe Telecom bared on Thursday, April 23, that it has tapped online retailer Lazada to bring its GCash mobile wallet to the e-commerce space in South East Asia.
Lazada is owned by Rocket Internet, a German Internet company in which PLDT, the main rival of Globe, has a minority stake. In August last year, PLDT invested $445 million in the tech firm.
The Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) was signed by Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu and Lazada founder and CEO Maximilian Bittner on April 22 in Seoul, South Korea. In the coming months, it will pave the way for GCash to be used as a mode of payment in Lazada?s eCommerce website through an open integrated mWallet platform.
?We are excited about this partnership with Lazada because of its customer traffic and the innovation it has done with online shopping. It is a great opportunity for us to leverage on this collaboration by bringing GCash at the forefront of eCommerce. By increasing transactions through mWallet, we will once again expand the online ecosystem of Globe and provide our customers with a full digital lifestyle experience,? said Cu.
GCash is a product of Globe Telecom?s wholly-owned subsidiary G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI) and is among the pioneers of telco-led mWallet in the world. GXI has also established a wide network of local and international partners accept GCash as a means of payment for products and services via mobile phone or the Internet.
Through mWallet, Globe customers no longer need to own a credit card or even have a bank account to engage in e-commerce. Instead, they can turn their mobile phone into a virtual wallet to shop at the speed of a text message.
In just three years, Lazada has become one of the top B2C e-commerce market places in South East Asia with presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Lazada has over 15,000 merchants, and 1.4 million active customers and is currently valued at $1.2 billion with $700 million of investment funding. It has an online footprint of approximately 4 million daily visits to its websites and the largest Facebook following in Southeast Asia with over 12 million fans.
