There was a time when GCash was spoken of as a payments app, a convenient wrapper around mobile money. That description now feels quaint. In Globe Telecom’s first-quarter 2026 results, Mynt—the parent company of GCash—reported ₱5.6 billion in net income for the three months ended March 31, 2026, on ₱20.9 billion in revenues. Globe’s own equity share from Mynt reached ₱1.927 billion, reflecting its 34% stake after dilution from MUFG’s investment.
That puts Mynt in an unusual place in Philippine finance: not quite a bank, but earning like one. In the same quarter, UnionBank earned ₱3.8 billion, Security Bank earned ₱2.7 billion, and RCBC earned ₱2.7 billion. Mynt’s quarterly profit was therefore comfortably ahead of those of the listed lenders. Meanwhile, it came within range of PNB’s ₱6.37 billion and Chinabank’s ₱6.8 billion—institutions with long histories, banking licenses, branch networks, and trillion-peso balance sheets.
A new middleweight in finance
A rough first-quarter earnings league table, excluding the country’s largest bank heavyweights, now looks like this:
| Company | 1Q26 net income | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Chinabank | ₱6.8B | Still ahead, but now within Mynt’s earnings neighborhood. |
| PNB | ₱6.37B | Slightly above Mynt, but not by much. |
| Mynt / GCash | ₱5.6B | A fintech platform is now earning like a mid-sized bank. |
| UnionBank | ₱3.8B | Below Mynt despite a strong 167% year-on-year profit jump. |
| Security Bank | ₱2.7B | Less than half of Mynt’s quarterly profit. |
| RCBC | ₱2.7B | Also materially below Mynt’s 1Q26 earnings. |
This is not merely a ranking exercise. It marks a shift in where profit is being created. Traditional banks generate earnings through deposits, loans, spreads, fees, treasury income, and credit risk management. Mynt begins somewhere else: with daily payments, transfers, load purchases, bills, merchant transactions, and app-based financial services. Globe describes Mynt as operating through G-Xchange, the mobile-wallet operator of GCash, and Fuse Financing, its lending arm; the platform also offers payments, credit, savings, investments, and insurance products through the GCash app.
The magic is not payments alone. Payments are often low-margin. Their value lies in frequency. A wallet that is opened often becomes a distribution channel. A distribution channel that sees transaction flows can become a lender. A lender with data can underwrite small-ticket credit more cheaply and more quickly than institutions designed around branches and paper trails. Mynt’s lending suite—GCredit, GLoan, GGives, Sakto Loan, and Borrow Load—is built into the same app consumers already use for transfers and payments.
In that sense, Mynt has not simply copied a bank. It has unbundled the bank and rebuilt parts of it around mobile behavior. The customer relationship starts with convenience, not with a deposit account. The app earns trust through repetition. From there, it cross-sells. Globe’s filing says GCash remains a leading finance super-app in the Philippines and has expanded into cross-border payments through GCash Visa Card, Global Pay, GCash Overseas, and international accounts.
Why the comparison matters
The comparison with UnionBank is especially interesting. UnionBank has long been viewed as one of the country’s more digitally forward banks. Yet in 1Q26, even after reporting a sharp profit recovery to ₱3.8 billion, it still earned less than Mynt. Security Bank and RCBC, both established franchises with significant lending and deposit operations, each reported ₱2.7 billion in quarterly earnings, meaning Mynt earned roughly twice as much as either institution during the period.
PNB and Chinabank remain ahead, but the gap is no longer vast. PNB’s ₱6.37 billion profit was only around ₱0.8 billion above Mynt’s reported net income, while Chinabank’s ₱6.8 billion was about ₱1.2 billion higher. For a fintech that began as a wallet, being in the same quarterly earnings conversation as these banks is remarkable.
The obvious objection is that a bank and a fintech are not the same animal. Banks are capital-intensive, regulated, deposit-taking institutions that carry credit, liquidity, market, and operational risks through cycles. Mynt’s economics depend partly on partnerships, platform scale, transaction behavior, and digital distribution. Its risk profile is different and, in some respects, less tested. Still, profit is profit. And in 1Q26, Mynt’s profit pool was already larger than that of several listed banks.
The valuation clue
The market has noticed. Globe’s filing says Mynt secured strategic investments from Ayala, through AC Ventures, and from MUFG, pushing Mynt’s valuation to US$5 billion. MUFG’s acquisition completed an 8% stake in Mynt and diluted Globe’s ownership from 36% to 34%.
That valuation once looked like a bet on growth. With Mynt earning ₱5.6 billion in a single quarter, it increasingly looks like a bet on profits too. Annualizing the first-quarter result yields an earnings run rate of roughly ₱22–₱23 billion. That is a crude calculation—quarterly results can fluctuate, and credit costs may rise—but it explains why Mynt is now being viewed not just as a technology story, but as a financial-services compounder.
For Globe, the earnings contribution is already material. Its 1Q26 filing says Globe’s equity share in Mynt rose to ₱1.9 billion, up from ₱1.8 billion a year earlier, and that Mynt’s contribution accounted for 30% of Globe’s net income before tax, up from 22% in 2025. In other words, the telecom company’s most exciting earnings engine may no longer be telecoms.
The bankless bank
The broader lesson is that banking is becoming less about where financial services are licensed and more about where customers spend their financial attention. Banks still own deposits, capital, regulatory credibility, and balance-sheet muscle. But Mynt owns something equally powerful: habit. Millions of users do not “visit” GCash; they live inside it, paying, borrowing, saving, investing, and transacting in small bursts throughout the day.
That is why Mynt’s 1Q26 performance deserves attention. It has not merely narrowed the gap with traditional financial institutions. It has crossed a psychological line. A wallet has become a profit machine. A fintech has entered the mid-bank earnings table. And the Philippine financial sector now has a new question to answer: if the bank branch was once the front door to finance, what happens when the front door becomes an app?
We’ve been blogging for free. If you enjoy our content, consider supporting us!
Disclaimer: This is for informational purposes and is not investment advice. Figures are taken from company disclosures and exchange data; valuation ratios include the author’s calculations based on cited inputs.
Comments
Post a Comment