Key Takeaways
Coins.ph has integrated Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) into the Philippines' national QR payment system, enabling users to spend the cryptocurrencies at an estimated 700,000 merchant locations. The move, announced May 20, represents one of the largest real-world crypto payment integrations in Southeast Asia.
"We aren’t just adding new tokens; we are redefining what a digital wallet can do," Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.ph, said. "This is the future of finance in action and we’re making the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies a functional part of the Filipino daily life.”
The system functions through QRPh, the national QR code standard developed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). When a user scans a merchant's QR code, their crypto balance is automatically converted into Philippine pesos to settle the transaction. This expansion follows a prior rollout that introduced stablecoin (USDT) payments through the same infrastructure, which the company said saw significant volume.
The integration is particularly notable as it embeds crypto within a state-backed national payment standard rather than a private merchant network. It positions the Philippines, a market with over 15 million crypto users and $38 billion in annual remittance inflows, as a live testing ground for mainstream crypto spending at scale. Coins.ph operates as a licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider and Electronic Money Issuer under the regulation of the BSP.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
