Yes you read the title correctly.

PayMaya Philippines Inc. (formerly Smart eMoney, Inc.) just announced here in MWC 2016 that they have completed successful trials of interoperability with Globe’s GCash. This basically means that eventually you can send funds from PayMaya to GCash and vice-versa. This is one of those super rare moments that PLDT/Smart and Globe are playing nice with one another, lol.

How did this all come about? PayMaya and Globe are collaborating because it is really in their interests to grow this particular category. A huge number of Filipinos are still cardless. In fact, major e-commerce stores such as Zalora still rely heavily on Cash-on-Delivery payment methods (more than 50% of their businesses). Giving the option to send to one another makes the idea of signing up for either card more appealing.

Apart from the joint interests, this is also part of the National Payments Retail System by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). This program includes non-bank financial institutions such as Smart’s PayMaya.

Unfortunately there are no official dates yet on when interoperability will be offered by both providers. We suspect it won’t take too long though. That said, if you haven’t signed up for a PayMaya account yet, click here to get started.