The Philippines’ decision to remove direct gambling access from e-wallets is now visible in the financial performance of the country’s largest wallet ecosystem. An AP Securities analysis dated 7 October 2026 put Mynt’s payment solutions revenue at PHP24.9 billion for the first half, down 3.7% year on year, and linked the decline to the full-period effect of gambling-platform delinking.
That finding matters because it moves the debate beyond operator gross gaming revenue. The policy did not only add friction for gaming companies; it also removed a transaction and discovery channel from the payment business that previously connected users to licensed platforms.
What the latest figures say
Asia Gaming Brief reported that AP Securities calculated Mynt’s first-half payment solutions revenue at PHP24.9 billion, 3.7% below the prior-year period. The brokerage attributed the pressure to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas measure that separated gambling access from supervised payment applications.
The regulatory action itself is clear. BSP Memorandum M-2025-029, issued on 14 August 2025, instructed supervised institutions to remove links that redirected account holders from their mobile payment apps and websites to gambling platforms within 48 hours. BSP cited the surge in online gambling transactions and concern about their effect on consumers’ financial health.
GCash subsequently removed licensed gaming top-up and withdrawal services from its app effective 16 August 2025. Its customer guidance directs users to the official websites and support channels of gaming merchants.
Mynt is not a shrinking company
The segment decline needs context. It does not mean that Mynt’s overall business contracted. The company’s IPO materials put first-half 2026 revenue at PHP43.27 billion, up 10.4%, while net income increased 7.3% to PHP10.82 billion. Mynt priced its proposed Philippine Stock Exchange offering at PHP6.60 per share, representing a firm offer size of approximately PHP53 billion.
The public offer opened on 6 October and is scheduled to close on 12 October, with listing targeted for 20 October, subject to the stated conditions. The company said institutional bookbuilding was multiple times oversubscribed, while the PSE’s final terms notice confirms the offer timetable and structure.
The commercially useful reading is therefore more precise: gambling-related payment activity appears to have weakened one revenue line, while Mynt’s broader lending, payments and financial-services ecosystem continued to grow.
Delinking changed distribution, not only checkout
Before the intervention, an e-wallet could serve as payment account, gaming discovery surface and shortcut into a licensed operator. Removing the link did not necessarily remove the customer’s wallet or the operator’s ability to accept permitted payments. It removed the embedded route between them.
That distinction changes the competitive balance. Operators with strong direct brands, trusted domains and an effective first-party payment journey can ask users to leave the wallet environment and complete the process elsewhere. Smaller platforms that depended on the wallet’s interface for discovery and confidence face a harder conversion problem.
It also shifts more responsibility to gaming companies. The operator must explain where the user is going, prove that the destination is legitimate, manage failed transactions and provide withdrawal support without leaning on the wallet’s in-app environment.
Our view: this is a channel reset
Our view is that the Philippine wallet rule should be understood as a distribution reset rather than a simple payment restriction. The payment rail may still exist, but the high-trust bridge from finance app to gaming product has been removed.
We expect the largest licensed operators to rebuild part of that lost convenience through better direct onboarding, clearer payment instructions and stronger owned-media acquisition. We also expect payment providers to separate transaction processing more carefully from discovery, promotion and account redirection.
The available evidence does not establish that the entire 3.7% segment decline was caused by gambling delinking. That is AP Securities’ interpretation, and Mynt’s public results do not provide a counterfactual showing how payment revenue would have performed without the policy. The direction is nevertheless consistent with the immediate transaction decline previously reported by the gaming regulator and with GCash’s removal of the relevant in-app services.
What the industry should watch next
- Operator conversion: whether licensed platforms can recover users through direct journeys without restoring embedded wallet access.
- Payment mix: whether volume moves to bank transfers, other supervised channels or new compliant payment products.
- Trust and fraud: whether forcing users outside familiar wallet interfaces increases exposure to lookalike and unlicensed sites.
- Policy permanence: whether BSP’s eventual standards preserve delinking or introduce a controlled route for gambling payments.
The Mynt numbers do not close the case. They give the market its clearest payment-provider signal so far that gambling safeguards can redistribute revenue well beyond the operators they directly regulate. Follow IGI’s Payments coverage, Companies reporting and wider ASEAN market intelligence.
