QR Ph, InstaPay payments nearly triple on Xendit platform

Payments through QR Ph and InstaPay nearly tripled on payments infrastructure company Xendit from January 2025 to April this year, a study released by the global payments infrastructure company on Thursday showed.

According to the Xendit Ecommerce Payments Momentum Report, payments over QR Ph and InstaPay on its platform grew 198% from January 2025 to April 2026, with both accounting for about 13% of e-commerce value in Xendit’s data.

The report indicated that while cash on delivery still makes up about 23% of Philippine e-commerce value and is the highest of the six markets, followed by Vietnam with around 16%, some 33% of Filipino respondents used it much less than a year ago.

Some 12% of Filipinos said nothing would make them switch, around twice the level in most other markets.

“Filipino consumers have always been receptive to new technology and we see the same in digital payment, but they don’t all pay the same way. One wants an e-wallet, another scans a QR Ph code, another uses a card,” Xendit president Nazim Ali said in an emailed statement.

“So for a business, going digital isn’t about choosing one main payment method and steering everyone onto it. It’s knowing which methods your digitally savvy customers actually use, offering those, and making sure each one is secure. If people can’t find the option they use, or don’t trust the checkout, they leave,” he added.

The same report found that 41% of Filipinos indicated a missing payment option was the main reason they abandoned an online purchase in the past three months. This was also the top reason in Indonesia (51%), Malaysia (31%), Vietnam (42%), and Thailand (33%).

For business leaders, only 8% ranked fraud among their top two payment concerns, even as 48% expect it to be within five years.

“For Philippine merchants, the next few years will mean managing three shifts at once: fast growth in real-time payments, a cash habit that is fading more slowly than elsewhere in the region, and fraud moving up business leaders’ list of concerns,” Xendit said.

“The checkouts that hold on to sales will be the ones that offer the full range of ways Filipinos pay, with security built into each of them from the start,” it added.

The report draws on a survey of 1,000 Filipino online shoppers, part of a 6,000-respondent survey across six Southeast Asian markets, as well as Xendit transaction data. —NB, GMA News