Tonik, the Philippines’ first digital-only neobank, marks its first-year anniversary in the country. Since its inauguration last year and despite the pandemic and other challenges, the bank has achieved significant strides, aside from providing Filipinos a game-changing way to manage their finances through its revolutionary app.
Among these developments, the most important is being the first in the country and one of the very few neobanks to secure its own license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and in just over a month of operation, Tonik secured over PhP1-billion (US$20-million) in retail deposits. Eight months later, the neobank then secured over PhP5-billion (US$100-million) in deposits.
“2021 has been a challenge for all of us, and we saw how the health crisis increased the demand for digital banking and cashless services. We are happy to have been able to provide efficient neobanking services to Filipinos as we all navigated through the pandemic. Your trust and support helped us achieve our feats along the way and how we got to where we are now,” says Tonik founder and CEO Greg Krasnov.
From the start, Tonik played a pivotal role in driving financial inclusion in the country through its game-changing deposit, payment, and card products such as Time Deposit rates of up to 6% per annum, Stashes, nameless and highly secure physical debit cards and its first cash loan product, Quick Loan. As it enters its second year, Tonik assures customers of more transformative innovations backed up by their latest Series B funding of US$131-million led by Mizuho Bank, one of the largest banking groups in the Asia Pacific region – the largest Series B round ever in the Philippines.
Tonik is making an effort to go further and continuously drive financial inclusion. In the next 12 months, Tonik is eyeing to expand its lending portfolio through venturing into buy now, pay later and home loans for up to PhP2.5-million (US$50,000). Apart from this, the bank reveals that cryptocurrency will soon be integrated in their proprietary app to provide more opportunities for Filipinos to save using digital assets.
“Armed with our unwavering dedication to accelerate financial inclusion in the country, Tonik assures that more accessible, simplified and customer-centric banking products will be available to more Filipinos in many more years to come,” adds Krasnov. “The Philippines is one of the biggest markets in demand of crypto and lending services in the world, and we are laser focused on making these available soon in our app.”
Being the country’s first digital-only neobank, Tonik is supervised by BSP, and deposits are insured by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC). Its cloud-based solution is powered by global financial technology leaders such as Mastercard, Amazon Web Services, and Finastra.
