PSE-GCash partnership boosts stock market accounts in 2023

Stock market accounts saw a double-digit growth in 2023, thanks to the Philippine Stock Exchange’s (PSE) partnership with mobile wallet GCash which made opening of stock market accounts more accessible to the public.

In a statement on Wednesday, the PSE reported that it booked a total of 1,906,019 stock market accounts as of end-2023, up 11.3% or 193,285 accounts from 1,712,734 accounts in 2022.

The local bourse operator said the growth was mainly due to new accounts opened through the GStocksPH platform.

In September 2022, the PSE, GCash, stock brokerage firm AB Capital Securities launched GStocks, allowing users of the mobile wallet to access stock trading through their application.

The stock market operator said GStocks also pushed the share of online accounts to 80% of total stock market accounts. 

The PSE said online accounts stood at 1,525,768 as of end-2023, up 21.2% or 266,861 accounts.

“Giving e-wallet holders direct access to the stock market is instrumental in our drive to increase retail investor participation in the market,” said PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon.

In terms of classification, retail investors made up 98.5% of total accounts while the remaining 1.5% belonged to institutional investors. 

Similarly, local investors made up 98.5% of total accounts while the remaining 1.5% were foreign investors. 

In the online space, retail accounts comprised 99.9% of total online accounts. 

Local investors owned 98.8% of the online accounts while foreign online accounts took up the remaining 1.2%.

The PSE said average value per online trade grew by 1.8% to P47,050.48 from the 2022 average of P46,236.40. 

Meantime, the 2023 average value per trade in terms of total market transactions was at P85,385.54, up 9.6% from P77,926.41. —VAL, GMA Integrated News