Meg Gan-Sohrabi
For countless families in the Philippines, living pay-check to pay-check isn’t a choice, it’s a cycle rooted in generational financial trauma.
From an early age, many Filipinos witnessed their parents stretch ₱500 to last an entire week. Field trips were skipped to save rent money. Conversations about building wealth were rare. Instead, they learned how to delay hunger, juggle utang (debts), and survive until the next payday. A financial mindset shaped by survival. And that mindset has been passed down quietly, normalised, and often left unspoken.
Today, millions of Filipinos face the same struggle. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) found in its 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion Survey that only 48% of adults could cover a month of living expenses without borrowing, and 48% said it would be very difficult to come up with emergency funds. Prices are adding pressure: headline inflation reached 7.2% in September 2026, up from 1.7% a year earlier, with rice prices up 20.3%. When Filipinos turn to financial advice like budgeting apps, savings challenges, or investment tips they often find it irrelevant or unrealistic because much of it assumes stability. It assumes you have disposable income, a steady salary, or a financial safety net. It doesn’t speak to the urgency of choosing between food, transportation, tuition, or electricity. It fails to address the urgency and fragility that define financial life for millions.
The same survey from BSP shows where borrowing goes: 32% of loans fund food and basic needs, and 34% of borrowers often have difficulty repaying. There is a disconnect between the reality in the Philippines and the advice being given, which has led to growing frustration and distrust toward the financial system. Financial tools and advice need to change, because the reality for many Filipinos is different.
Enter open finance. A transformative framework that allows individuals to securely access and share their financial data across banks, e-wallets, and service providers. Open finance isn’t simply about better apps or faster banking. It’s about redefining how trust, access, and dignity work in the Filipino economy.
Open finance creates an opportunity for:
In short: Open Finance bridges the gap between survival and prosperity.
Instead of hiding bills in drawers or pretending everything’s fine, open finance creates space for transparency, planning, and healing. By turning fragmented financial footprints into usable, portable data, open finance gives millions their first real foothold toward building wealth, accessing safer loans, growing small businesses, and investing in their futures.
The digital foundations are already in place. Digital payments made up 64.69% of retail payment volume in 2025, up from 42.1% in 2022, and 86% of adults own a smartphone.
For too long, the Filipino financial experience has been defined by scarcity, sacrifice, and survival. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Financial stability is not just a private good, it’s a public one. When households stabilize, communities stabilise. When communities stabilise, economies grow.
When economies grow inclusively, trust in institutions deepens.
Open Finance isn’t just personal empowerment. It’s nation-building.
This is why initiatives like the first-ever BSP Open Finance Hackathon in 2024, proudly supported by Ozone API and other ecosystem partners, matter. The hackathon showcased the creativity, collaboration, and infrastructure needed to bring Open Finance to life, proving that innovation and inclusion can move together. Run by the BSP and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), it drew 51 teams, 37 of which submitted proofs of concept, with Demo Day on 7 August 2024.
Momentum has continued since. The BSP’s Open Finance PH pilot, launched in 2023 with the IFC and World Bank, produced its first live use case in July 2025 with OFxPERA, which uses consent-based data sharing to help people open a PERA retirement account online. In March 2026 the BSP announced that customers of G-Xchange (GCash), UnionBank, PNB and RCBC can open a PERA online through the same route. Participation remains voluntary and account information and payments are still in design, so the biggest opportunity is still ahead.
Open finance offers possibilities. Possibility for a future where families are no longer forced to choose between food and electricity. Where credit is built on trust and real behavior, not just outdated systems. Where visibility into spending leads to control, and control leads to confidence.
At Ozone API, we’re proud to be helping build the foundations for Open Finance in the Philippines because open finance brings access not tied to legacy systems. It is a right, backed by transparency, interoperability, and trust. The Filipino financial story doesn’t have to be defined by scarcity anymore. It can be rewritten, one open transaction, and one open opportunity at a time.
Canada does not need to guess how consumer-directed finance plays out. It can watch. That is the country’s genuine advantage as it builds its Consumer-Driven Banking framework: every other major open banking market has already run the experiment, and each has left a different lesson Canada can improve on. The UK took over six years...
The FCA has published its Open Finance Roadmap, with key milestones beginning this year and a 2030 horizon. Banks, lenders, and fintechs face a significantly wider scope than open banking, with real commercial opportunity for those who prepare early. Here is what the roadmap says and what it means for your business.
The FCA has published its Open Finance Roadmap with specific milestones, credible use cases, and an honest acknowledgement that the UK is catching up, not leading. We break down what the plan gets right, where the real risks are, and what regulators worldwide should take from it.
