Maya, the fully digital bank of PLDT Inc., is keen to tap more young entrepreneurs and social media personalities to expand financial literacy among the Filipino youth.

“We tapped a broad range of content creators and key opinion leaders online. Some of our most prolific partners are entrepreneurial but focus a lot on creating educational, financial content,” Maya chief marketing officer Pepe Torres said last Friday.

Among them are Nicole Alba and Antonette Aquino, who share the principles and tips on saving, investing, and insurance, and YouTube couple Cong Velasquez and Viy Cortez, who have multiple businesses.

Torres said successful content creation works like good money management, which both require discipline and strategy.

“Being a content creator is already being entrepreneurial. What you put in is what you get back.”

In money management, he explained one could exercise discipline by retaining cash in a bank for emergency needs or future goals and the strategy by diverting some of it for investments.

Torres hopes the lessons from content creators will inspire fellow young Filipinos to build a small business and explore the benefits of digital banking to grow it.

“We have small businesses all over the Philippines pitching their ideas on how to grow and win money to scale up their business.”

Maya offers a QR-based online payment service for small businesses to collect customer payments.

To expand its use, Maya launched last year Scale Up, where sellers of Shopee compete for Maya funding to grow their business.

“Definitely, we partner with business creators whenever it fits,” Torres said.

He said Maya would launch investing services and a donation platform soon, apart from offering microcredit for small business owners.

To help reach more customers, Torres stressed all Maya partnerships cater to Filipinos aged 20 to 40 who can convince older customers to adopt digital banking.

“We want everything in a bank but also banking for everyone. But we’re targeting the tech-savvy, usually in this age group.”

He explained, “they are the ones telling their elders, especially during the pandemic, that they don’t have to go to a physical bank, just do it with a digital bank instead.”

Maya data shows its customers increased to over 44 million, the highest growth among fully digital banks last year.