THE recent GCash phishing attack has sparked lively discussions on what happened and how to prevent future incidents. Top of mind, measures to strengthen consumer protection should take center stage, in parallel to building trust in technology to advance both digital and financial inclusion in the Philippines.
In the past 20 plus years as an IT practitioner and later executive in the Philippines, I feel immensely privileged to have been involved in major shifts in how Filipinos adopt technology: in the late '90s to early 2000s as the SMS capital of the world, around 2015 as social media capital of the world, and now post-pandemic, as perhaps the fintech capital of the world. However, I feel that we have also consistently been the "budol" capital of the world. Unfortunately, it is so ingrained in our culture that we even have a center of excellence in forged documents — Recto Avenue. More could be done to turn this around.
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