GCash and Alibaba Cloud’s successful collaboration: driving fintech development in the Philippines

GCash, as the leading mobile financial services platform in the Philippines, has successfully overcome the technical challenges brought about by rapid user growth through in-depth cooperation with Alibaba Cloud, not only achieving real-time expansion of infrastructure, but also significantly improving data analysis and security guarantee capability.

Challenges and Opportunities

With the popularity of mobile Internet and the growth of the young population in the Philippines, the number of GCash users has increased dramatically. However, its original on-premises traditional platform was unable to cope with this rapid growth, resulting in frequent system capacity bottlenecks and downtime issues, seriously affecting user experience and brand reputation. At the same time, the expansion of traditional platforms is not only costly but also inefficient, and cannot meet GCash's needs for real-time expansion and cost-effectiveness.

Alibaba Cloud Solutions

Faced with these challenges, GCash chose to cooperate with Alibaba Cloud and introduced a series of advanced cloud computing solutions, including IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), ApsaraDB RDS database, OceanBase distributed database, SOFAStack financial-grade distributed PaaS platform, ECS (Elastic Computing Service), MaxCompute big data processing platform, OSS (Object Storage Service), ZOLOZ real-name authentication solution, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and anti-DDoS attack services, etc.

Through the professional guidance of Alibaba Cloud engineers, GCash followed three core principles when deploying these solutions: grayscale release, monitoring deployment, and formulating emergency plans. These principles ensure a smooth deployment process and effectively reduce potential risks.

Remarkable results

Since the cooperation, GCash has achieved remarkable results. Especially during the COVID-19 epidemic, when the global economy was severely impacted, GCash, with its powerful cloud computing infrastructure and data analysis capabilities, became an important tool for many Filipinos to maintain their daily lives. The number of monthly active users has increased by 3.7 times, and transaction volume has surged by 1,000%. The system has always maintained stable operation without any service interruptions due to user growth.

Alibaba Cloud's security solutions also play an important role. ZOLOZ real-name authentication solution significantly shortens customer account verification time and improves authentication accuracy and efficiency. The anti-DDoS service combined with Alibaba's intelligent detection and protection system effectively resists complex DDoS attacks and ensures the security of GCash applications. WAF further enhances GCash's network security protection capabilities through real-time monitoring and automatic repair of zero-day vulnerabilities.

future outlook

Looking to the future, GCash plans to continue to deepen its partnership with Alibaba Cloud and jointly promote the development of fintech in the Philippines. By introducing more advanced cloud computing technologies and solutions, GCash will continue to improve its service quality and user experience, bringing convenient, safe and efficient financial services to more Filipinos.

Alibaba Cloud, as the world's leading cloud computing service provider, will continue to provide GCash with a full range of technical support and service guarantees to help it achieve more brilliant results in the Philippines and even around the world.