New Zealand eyes Manila as fintech market

The Philippines could be the next big market for New Zealand’s fintech industry with its more than 100 million population and tech-savvy populace, Rachel Strevens, co-founder of cryptocurrency investment platform Invsta, said following a business summit in the country.

Strevens, who took part in a recent Asia New Zealand Foundation delegation to the Philippines to understand tech disruption in Southeast Asia, said Manila presents a huge opportunity, noting that a majority of its population are millennials more likely to invest in digital currency than the baby boomer generation.

“The biggest revelation for me was that the Philippines has an enormous potential market for financial services,” Strevens said.

The widespread use of the English language as well as the growing income of the country’s middle class also provide more advantages, she said.

Strevens said, “On top of this, the population is tech-savvy and very young, with a median age of just 23. Millennials are eight times more likely to buy Bitcoin than baby boomers, so it’s an incredibly large and attractive market for us.”

She explained that cryptocurrencies are proving their longevity and could find other purposes beyond trading. She added that blockchain, the underlying technology for digital currencies, also has many other uses.

At the same time, Strevens told New Zealand businessmen not to miss out on investment opportunities in the Philippines, saying that the Southeast Asian nation could be their next big export market. She said improperly assessing the Philippines could prove a mistake and noted only a few New Zealand businessmen have harnessed the potential of the Philippines.

More importantly, an estimated 10 million Filipinos work overseas and send nearly $30 billion annually back home. Strevens said the blockchain could provide the technology to streamline the legacy financial systems used by Filipinos to remit money.

“Crypto and blockchain technologies are speeding up the transaction time of transferring money around the world and this is having a huge impact on the remittance industry as people can move money back home faster at a lower cost,” she added.