Neil Trinidad

When you’re already known as a financial super-app with interests in everything from bill payment to loans, investment and insurance, it would be tempting to assume your work is done. But Neil Trinidad’s steady push to propel GCash, the Philippines’ cashless network, to new heights is exemplary of a marketer who is restless in pursuit of excellence.

Core to Trinidad’s recent efforts has been getting GCash embedded more deeply across every aspect of Filipino life, built on use cases demonstrating how the app can help with everything from enabling contactless payments on the local trains to encouraging users of food delivery apps to end their reliance on cash. GCash even pioneered a livestream to ‘sell’ job vacancies via its GJobs service. 

Meanwhile, Trinidad also pushed the brand into the SME market with the launch of GCash for Business, which is helping more than six million stores and individual online merchants to accept digital payments. Filipinos outside the country haven’t been forgotten as GCash Overseas allows workers in 16 countries to send instant remittances back home.

This increasing array of products is united by a consistent brand and tone, with an inventive approach to marketing that often utilises a sense of humour. For example, driving awareness of free hospitalisation insurance through the use of an ‘earworm’ campaign of 80s tunes and partnerships with the likes of boyband SB19, who launched their own range of customisable GCash Visa cards.

GCash has become equally known for its role on the forefront of digital security, combatting SMS spoofing through its ‘Entertainingly Serious’ campaign which helped drive an 80% reduction in scam reports, the latest in a long line of campaigns which have emphasised customer safety. The campaign was a contributing factor in GCash achieving an Ipsos Net Trust Score of 90%, double the global sector average. It also garnered 17 local and regional awards, including Masters of Media at the 2025 YouTube Works Southeast Asia Awards, a first for a Philippines business.

For Trinidad, even having eight out of 10 Filipinos using the app, with active user numbers seven times higher than GCash’s nearest rival, is no excuse for complacency.