MANILA, PHILIPPINES — For Pride Month, GCash, the Philippines’ leading finance super app and largest cashless ecosystem, celebrated its partnerships with businesses owned by members of the LGBTQIA+ community, further pursuing its vision of digital financial inclusion and economic growth for all Filipinos.
One such business is Michin Saja, a coffee shop owned by entrepreneur Alexis Carlos. Alexis maintains Michin Saja, which she inherited from her mother, as a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community — and the result is a café that values customer comfort and employee empowerment. Thanks to this commitment, Michin Saja has expanded: It opened its second branch in Marikina last March, years after the business was launched in San Mateo, Rizal.
GCash for Business has been, for Michin Saja, an integral part of day-to-day operations, its eventual expansion, and as support through economically demanding times. The café, like many small businesses, needed to prevail over the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, including lower sales that could not cover daily expenses and the need for a widely accessible cashless transaction system.
With the help of financial solutions offered by GCash for Business — including GLoan, the cash loan service run by GCash’s official lending arm, Fuse — Michin Saja found enough stability to begin thriving. Alexis said, “In order for us to overcome the difficulties of the pandemic, we had to develop new strategies or new products. My mother used GLoan for the research and development of our products and the marketing.”
Michin Saja also relied heavily on GCash payments at the height of stringent quarantine lockdowns. Alexis shared, “During the pandemic, one of the most common problems was that we had to be contactless to the customers. Using GCash helps us be more efficient when it comes to delivering, and it’s not just us [who benefit] but also the customers, who have a variety of ways to pay for their order.”
Michin Saja’s story is a testament to how GCash is committed to being the growth partner of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), whether through digital payments or loans.
“LGBTQIA+ businesses are known for their creativity, vibrance, and warmth. It is important that they flourish because communities around them flourish too,” said GCash Sustainability Head CJ Alegre. “We want to be there every step of the way for these businesses, enabling them to freely access financial services and loans so they can thrive in this digital economy.”
Scan to Pay, WebPay, and Funds Disbursement are among the offline payment options available to MSMEs from GCash for Business. With the GCash QR, businesses can get access to secure QR transactions, digital wallets, and real-time payments to their suppliers, as well as more options for their customers to pay with GCredit and GGives. Merchants also enjoy no wallet limits with their GCash QR and real-time viewing of their transactions through the merchant portal.
GCash for Business also offers a wide variety of loan services through Fuse, such as GCredit, GGives, GLoan, and GLoan Sakto, where users can borrow money as little as PHP 100 to as much as PHP 125,000 to fund anything they need for their business. These cash loans are easy to access right on the GCash app, so borrowing is a hassle-free experience.
Applications are assessed not on credit history and collateral but on past transactions on the app, making it easy for individuals and businesses to take out loans without facing discrimination. This feature works to buck the global trend where LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs are less likely to secure loans due to unconscious bias. Women, small business owners, sari-sari store owners, farmers, public market vendors, and under-banked Filipinos also use GLoan due to its easy, accessible, and non-discriminatory processes.
In addition to digital financial services, GCash for Business also launched The QueeR Market, where users can explore a directory of LGBTQIA+ businesses. Each merchant listing comes with a description of how it supports LGBTQIA+ employees and customers, as well as personal stories of the business owners. The QueeR Market website lets queer-owned businesses sign up and be featured year-round, broadening their reach before potential customers, as well as registering to access payment solutions.
“When you belong to the LGBTQIA+ community, it is crucial to find businesses and organizations that welcome and celebrate you. To achieve that, LGBTQIA+ businesses and organizations need to be supported and empowered,” said CJ. “GCash is committed to being the growth partner of these businesses, for the good of the broader LGBTQIA+ community and the country’s goal for financial inclusion.”
