The Philippines' Digital Banking Wave: Deposits Are Surging, Profits Aren't Following Evenly

The growth figure, and what sits underneath it

Philippine digital bank deposits grew 44% to approximately PHP 138.5 billion in 2025, and had already surpassed PHP 150 billion by the first quarter of 2026 according to subsequent Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) figures cited in financial press coverage — evidence, as that reporting frames it, that the 2025 surge was not a one-off spike (FinanceXMagazine, “Digital Banks Overtake Incumbents as Philippine Deposits Surge 44%”). This figure is reported as sourced from BSP data but was accessed here via financial press summary rather than a BSP release retrieved directly — flagged Partially Verified, with direct BSP confirmation recommended before publish given how central it is to this article’s argument.

Individual bank disclosures corroborate the growth story at the company level. Maya Bank, in a company release reported by trade press, stated it reached approximately PHP 68 billion in deposits and 10.7 million bank customers by end-2025, and achieved full-year profitability within two and a half years of launch — a milestone The Asian Banker reportedly recognised as placing Maya among a “select group” of digital banks transitioning to sustainable growth (InsiderPH, “WINNING | Maya scales profitably as digital bank growth accelerates,” citing a Maya company release). A separate, slightly earlier trade report cited GoTyme Bank at approximately PHP 43.5 billion in deposits, positioning itself for profitability by 2027 via a “phygital” model combining a mobile app with retail kiosks in Robinsons malls (Fintech News Philippines, “Philippines Fintech Report 2026”).

The profitability and asset-quality divergence

The detail that complicates a straightforward growth narrative is asset quality. The digital banking sector’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio stood at 6.16% in January 2026, nearly double the 3.31% recorded across the Philippine banking system as a whole, according to financial press reporting; the same reporting attributes this to digital banks’ reliance on high savings rates to attract deposits combined with loan books skewed toward higher-yield, riskier consumer borrowers, and notes BSP has said it is “monitoring the segment closely” (FinanceXMagazine, “Digital Banks Overtake Incumbents as Philippine Deposits Surge 44%”). This NPL figure is flagged Partially Verified on the same basis as the deposit growth figure above — attributed to BSP but not independently retrieved from a BSP source in this session.

The same reporting notes that “nearly five years after the central bank opened the segment, many digital banks are still not making money” — a caveat worth holding alongside Maya’s specific profitability disclosure, since it suggests Maya’s result (achieved within 2.5 years of launch, per its own reported release) is being framed by outside commentary as a genuine outlier rather than the sector norm.

The customer-perception ranking that complicates the “who’s winning” question

A further complication comes from Forbes’ World’s Best Banks 2026 ranking, compiled with Statista from a survey of over 54,000 customers across 34 countries. Eight Philippine banks appeared on the list, and — notably — digital-native lenders took the top two positions: MariBank Philippines (controlled by Singapore’s Sea Ltd and integrated into the Shopee ecosystem) ranked first, followed by GoTyme Bank, with Maya Bank placed fifth (FinanceXMagazine, citing Forbes/Statista’s World’s Best Banks 2026 ranking). This is worth flagging specifically because it complicates a “Maya as clear category leader” narrative that its deposit and profitability figures alone might suggest: on a large-sample customer perception survey, two competitors with different distribution models — Shopee-ecosystem integration for MariBank, mall-kiosk “phygital” presence for GoTyme — outranked it.

Regulatory context: the sector is about to get more competitive

BSP capped digital bank licences at six from 2021, then lifted that moratorium via Circular No. 1205 in December 2024, effective 1 January 2025, raising the cap to ten and opening review of additional applications — a regulatory fact corroborated across multiple sources reviewed for this article, though the specific circular number is flagged Partially Verified pending direct confirmation against BSP’s own circular archive. MariBank itself, per this reporting, is among the newer entrants under this expanded framework.

What this means for evaluating the sector

The evidence gathered here does not support a single clean story about which digital banking model — Maya’s integrated fintech ecosystem, GoTyme’s phygital kiosk network, or MariBank’s Shopee-embedded distribution — is “winning” the Philippine market. Each metric tells a different story: Maya leads on disclosed profitability and deposit scale among the figures reviewed; MariBank and GoTyme lead on the Forbes/Statista customer-perception ranking; and the sector as a whole carries asset-quality risk (via the NPL figures cited) that BSP is reportedly monitoring even as deposits continue to grow. For anyone evaluating this sector — as an investor, a partner, or a competitor — the more useful question than “who’s winning” is which of these three metrics (deposit growth, profitability, customer trust) matters most for the specific decision being made, since the evidence here shows no single player leading on all three.

Sources and further reading

• FinanceXMagazine — “Digital Banks Overtake Incumbents as Philippine Deposits Surge 44%”
• InsiderPH — “WINNING | Maya scales profitably as digital bank growth accelerates”
• Fintech News Philippines — “Philippines Fintech Report 2026”
• Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas — recommend direct verification of deposit and NPL figures at bsp.gov.ph before publish