Abot kamay : Embedding digital transactions in the Philippines

Abstract

In this article, our principal interest is in the meaning-making of local users as digital transactions platforms become more prevalent in the everyday exchange cultures of the Philippines. Revisiting Polanyi's concept of embeddedness, we present an ethnographic study showing how disparate communities in Metro Manila are adapting their transactional practices in line with transaction platform affordances. Highlighting the Filipino concept of ‘abot kamay’, we discuss how digital transactions are given meanings within established social and cultural norms that combine processes of remuneration, redistribution and reciprocity. Accordingly, this study seeks to demonstrate the dynamic interaction between cultural norms, social economies and digital technologies.

Introduction

To remake the financial system is to reshape the social system, making the global rise of digital transactions a central issue for scholars of communication and society (see Manzerolle and Wiseman, 2016; Athique 2019; Swartz, 2020; Westermeier, 2020). In turn, the remediation of transactional processes via mobile digital platforms has rejuvenated interest in the anthropology of money (Carrier, 2012; Maurer, 2015; O’Dwyer, 2023). Seeking to boost uptake, finance industry literature has focused upon quantifying the adoption of cashless payments and micro-credit in the Global South (eg. Google et al., 2022). These parallel inquiries into the interaction of digital platforms and exchange cultures, mediated economies and the datafication of money intersect in the social practices of everyday fintech in the Global South. Here, the profusion of social transactions in the platform economy and the networked sociality of digital transaction chains requires cultural studies scholars to think substantively beyond monetary systems as payment processes in a purely functional sense. In this context, Karl Polanyi's substantivist political economy has returned to prominence in recent years, as scholars seek to develop appropriate frameworks for assessing the social transformation of economies under the aegis of digital platforms (Cohen, 2017; Athique 2020, 2025a; Ørmen and Gregersen, 2023).

In this article, the Polanyian concept of embeddedness grounds our analysis of how everyday dynamics of exchange in the Philippines are being remediated via digital transactions. In essence, the Polanyian notion of embeddedness determines that economic exchanges always take place within, and as, networks of social relationships (Polanyi, 1944). In more contemporary usage as a verb, the notion of embedding has largely been figured as a top-down stratagem for the insertion of technologies and business models into social systems. At a deeper level, the anthropological foundation of Polanyi's political economy emphasises the importance of cultural and historical context to any understanding of exchange, along with necessary attention to the ontological frameworks that give meaning to the norms of exchange in each setting. In our ethnographic research in the Philippines from 2019–2022, we were especially interested in the interaction between digital transactions and cultural norms characterised by strong community and group ties, robust kinship networks and the interpersonal obligations and economic benefits that come with them (see Cruz et al., 2020; Hollnsteiner, 1961; Kendall, 1976; Morais, 1981; Potter, 1981; Riggs, 1959).

In this article, we highlight the Filipino idiom ‘abot kamay’, which a study participant used to describe the utility of the Smart Padala mobile money system. In its literal sense, abot kamay translates to being ‘within reach’ (literally) and as a ‘helping hand’ (figuratively). Abot kamay thereby connotes both functional assistance and ontological proximity to others. In the smartphone era, digitally-enabled abot kamay occurs in a variety of forms that include: 1) Abono (paying for someone else's expense, for example, when someone is unable to pay because of distance or lack of cash); 2) Pantawid (money borrowed to get through a cash shortage); and 3) Emergency (distress calls from relatives and friends or calls for crisis donations initiated amongst community groups). In this particular context, abot kamay denotes the use of digital transaction platforms to enable monetary support remotely, something that became particularly imperative amid the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, but which is founded upon an ethos already deeply embedded in the social fabric of the country.

Transactional cultures in the Philippines

The Philippines closely fits the target profile for digital payment providers and multilateral policy advocates for ‘financial inclusion’, having a high level of mobile digital penetration (72%) with 44 per cent of the adult population remaining unbanked and outside of the formal economy (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, 2021; Statista, 2022). Consequently, everyday life in the Philippines has long been structured through a cash-based informal economy that remains, despite a high level of education, highly stratified in terms of opportunities and means. The Philippines is also well known for its highly developed and state-sponsored remittance economy promoting extensive overseas labour migration, an economic paradigm that has been immensely profitable for traditional money wire services such as Western Union, which has dominated this sector for decades before and after the country's independence from US control in 1946. Competing with established remittance services, app-based digital transactions took some time to be accepted in the country. The pre-cursor of mobile wallets, the SMS-based airtime ‘load’ gained wider popularity in the 2010s than online banking, largely because it provided a more accessible channel for users with intermittent access and connectivity, had less stringent ID requirements, and no minimum balances (Heyer and Mas, 2011; Pickens, 2009). Fundamentally, anything that makes the social exchange of value and the transactions embedded within social relationships cheaper and more convenient promises significant benefits for Filipinos.

Social relations, practices and situations not only animate the movement of cash but, in turn, money itself enables or disables certain modes of relationship. In that sense, the operation of money is ‘always embedded’, that is, tied to widely understood relational conventions and norms that suit specific social settings and contexts. A well-known example is the digital red packet or e-hongbao as a standard feature of Chinese social media platform WeChat, facilitating social conventions of reciprocity rather than market pricing (Hudik and Fang, 2020: 731). Across a profusion of formats, digital transactions now serve important functions in sustaining or transforming interpersonal and reciprocal relationships, signifying the fundamental importance of different forms of ‘social currencies’ in the digital era (Graeber, 2012; O’Dwyer, 2023). In the Philippines, kinship (both consanguineal and ritual), friendship and the compulsions of abot kamay provide organising principles for the redistributions that work to alleviate the paucity of social welfare, the precarity of labour, external and internal migration, and the acute imbalance of opportunities between metropolitan cities and provinces. The long history of transnational and translocal migrant remittances in the Philippines has previously demonstrated the various ways that money exchanges figure into expressions of nuclear and extended family relationships (see Katigbak, 2015; Madianou and Miller, 2013; Solari, 2019). Beyond immediate family obligations, distant kin, siblings and godparents in the Philippines also commonly express their closeness through gifting money, whether as part of symbolic kinship rituals or in a regularised fashion (Hart, 1977; Szanton, 1979; McKay 2007).

Remediating the three Rs in the Global South

The centrality of social relationships to network transactions prompts a wider re-evaluation of the digitisation of informal economies in the Global South. Polanyi's central argument in The Great Transformation (1944) was that market economies seek to ‘disembed’ existing relationships of exchange in order to impose profit motives (see Dale, 2010: 188–206). Gareth Dale, however, notes Fred Block's argument that Polanyi's subsequent point that market exchanges are ‘always embedded’ introduces a broader meaning which allows for an alternative reading: that market transformation occurs precisely where market mechanisms are able to insert themselves within established networks of exchange (Block, 1991). It is equally significant that Polanyi (1944) argued that prior to the modern emergence of market capitalism, human societies were typically organised around distinctively ‘non-market’ principles. In other works, Polanyi foregrounded archaic exchange systems based upon reciprocity, where the gift of goods or a service was undertaken with the understanding of an obligation in return from the receiver (Dalton, 1968; Polanyi and Pearson, 1977). Polanyi also noted the extensive systems of redistribution that arose with feudal economies, where surpluses were collected and distributed by central authorities through systems of patronage. Polanyi regarded both these systems as historically distinct from, and superseded by, the logics of the market in the eighteenth century.

Following Granovetter (1985), we strike a point of difference with that account by contesting both the obsolescence and the periodisation of these other logics of exchange. Rather, we argue that the functioning of abstract markets through money, which we will alliterate here as ‘remuneration’, has always been contingent upon the continuing and simultaneous operation of reciprocity and redistribution in society as a whole. In doing so, we situate Polanyi's distinctions of exchange systems within a more Braudel (1977) perspective, where the historical accretion of reciprocity, redistribution and remuneration constitutes multi-layered economies. To take an obvious example from everyday life: the economics of the modern family unit entail the use of money as payment, reward and capital, but are fundamentally based upon the reciprocity of exchanges and the redistribution of income. At the macro level, the redistributive function of the state in the Global South is typically augmented by the operation of the informal economy, which facilitates both the remuneration of uncontracted labour and the reciprocal transactions of the life world (see Hart, 1973; Kraemer-Mbula and Wunsch-Vincent, 2016).

The current policy pillars of the UN model for financial inclusion in developing economies also clearly demonstrate the parallel functions of the three Rs—in the extension of micro-finance to the poor, especially women (enabling remuneration), efficiency savings in public welfare and eGovernance (enabling redistribution) and lowering transaction costs in peer-to-peer payments (enabling reciprocity) (Better Than Cash Alliance [BTCA], 2022). Digital transaction platforms provide the everyday interface for these initiatives and, in that sense, constitute the principal means of embedding a new transactional order. Targeting informal economies in Asia and Africa, the UN Better Than Cash Alliance seeks to embed digital solutions in a domain where markets are less abstracted and the three competing logics of exchange most deeply enmeshed (BTCA, 2022). The paradigm shift to digital technologies is creating data records that map the nested logics of the three Rs in everyday operation, making transactions rather than payments a more cogent frame of analysis in the Global South.

Transaction platforms in the Philippines

In the Philippines, technical infrastructure and bandwidth for digital point-of-sale (POS) transactions remains relatively weak, even in metro areas, let alone the far-flung archipelagic geography of the provinces (Uy-Tioco, 2019). These material constraints obviously mitigate against the ubiquitous service requirements assumed to be requisite for a wholesale digital transition, especially if the key focus is the take up of in-person payment apps. Comparatively speaking, network access and data remain expensive in the Philippines, which results in intermittent and sachetised internet for most of the population, the majority of which is heavily dependent upon Facebook's Free Basics service (on sachetisation, see Soriano, 2024). Despite signing up to the multilateral agenda of the UN Better Than Cash Alliance, the Government of the Philippines has not been a structural player in the making of digital transactions architecture in Asia. Prior to 2019, there was neither a comprehensive national policy programme (as in India) nor a set of national champions controlling a mature ecosystem (as in China). Interfacing with the global digital economy, the Philippines is a relatively open digital economy compared to other large Asian nations. International transaction platforms, including Alipay, Paypal, and WeChat Pay, are all present in the Philippines, albeit amongst specialised user groups such as the sizeable Chinese community and the larger cohort of Filipinos engaged in international workflows, both onshore and offshore. Major banks such as Banco De Oro (BDO) and Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) also now offer app services to link conventional bank account holders with popular Asian shopping apps such as Shopee and Lazada.

The two leading players in the wider mobile money market, GCash and PayMaya, are both national brands underwritten by the dominant telecoms companies of the Philippines. GCash is a digital wallet backed by an alliance of China's Ant Financial, the Philippines’ Globe Telecom and the Ayala Group, one of a small number of family conglomerates that own much of the Philippine national economy. Evolving from an SMS-based service launched in 2004, the GCash smartphone app now offers P2P money transfer, POS payment, savings, bill payment, micro-credit, receipt of international transfers, and insurance (Soriano and Mamac, 2024). Critical partnerships in the GCash business ecosystem include the integration of GCash with Facebook's free messenger service in 2017. Equally important is partnership with the ubiquitous 7-Eleven franchise that allows users to make purchases or cash out their GCash wallets in their convenience stores (see Neves and Steinberg, 2024). The other leading player, PayMaya is a mobile wallet provider owned by Smart Communications, a mobile service subsidiary of the colonial era telecoms monopoly, PLDT, now a listed company in which Hong Kong's First Pacific and Japan's NTT are significant shareholders. A pioneer in the mobile sector, introducing SMS-based transfers of airtime currency contemporary with Kenya's M Pesa, Smart now combines its PayMaya wallet app with the Smart Padala money transfer service that is supported by an extensive network of franchise agents for cashing out remittance payments across the archipelago. Parent company PLDT owns major TV broadcasting outlets (TV5) and national newspapers in the Philippines and is an active sponsor of competitive eSports. PayMaya rebranded as Maya in 2022, with the launch of its ‘all-in-one’ smartphone app (Manila Times, 2022).

The southeast Asian super platform Grab established an early presence as the leading ride app in the Philippines in 2017, and is now providing a series of payment and lending services as part of its strategic evolution into a financial business (Athique, 2025b). Another notable transaction platform prior to the Ukraine war was the online marketplace and consumer credit app, Home Credit, which specialised in buy-now pay-later services in Southeast Asia and states of the former Soviet Union. Over the past decade, the leading money transfer services, payment apps and mobile wallets have been integrated into the country's rich tapestry of exchange practices and the social relationships that go with them. This process was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown of Metro Manila and the disruption of internal and international labour networks, with GCash (76 m users) emerging as the clear market leader by 2023, at the expense of Maya, with GrabPay also increasing its market share (Acopiado et al., 2022; Moreno et al., 2022; Statista, 2023).

Engaging communities

In this study, our investigation into the embedding of digital transactions was directed towards two distinct questions: 1) To what extent does the embedding of digital transaction platforms signify transformation of local transactional cultures?; and, 2) To what extent do everyday articulations of the utility of digital payments signify the embeddedness of exchange? Our qualitative research in the Philippines from 2019–2022 was centred upon particular localities and communities in Metro Manila. We undertook a detailed physical exploration of each chosen district, recording visual and oral evidence of digital transactions in local retail outlets such as sari sari (local) stores, convenience franchises and malls, along with the visibility of digital platforms and their workers. We collected a photographic record of each district and engaged with local vendors and their customers. Subsequently, we met with community representatives to organise focus groups of 8–10 male and female participants that were semi-structured using an identical set of questions and conducted in Tagalog. Our focal points were a broad range of digital transactions, covering digital payments, eCommerce, money transfers and mobile banking. We utilised communal meeting spaces in order to hold these discussions in situ, typically with the customary sharing of foods. For the first phase of our study in 2019–2020, we selected three districts of Metro Manila with differing socio-economic profiles: Santa Mesa, Payatas and Quezon City.

The purpose of this multi-sited approach was to explore the utility of digital transactions across the disparate needs and means of the larger urban population. Each of these locales has distinct demographics, with Santa Mesa being an established community with a predominance of middle-aged and employed householders. By contrast, Payatas is a poorer community, with a more transient population and mostly insecure livelihoods in the informal economy. Our cohort in central Quezon City was comprised of college-educated freelance professionals, primarily interfacing with the global digital economy. In the context of the Philippines, the Santa Mesa and Quezon City cohorts could be broadly characterised as lower and upper middle class respectively, whereas the Payatas cohort corresponds with the majority population. By contrast with upper- and middle-income countries, stable employment is taken here as a characteristic of the middle classes, where college-educated professionals remain a small and relatively elite cohort. Our engagement with this latter cohort took a different form, since by March 2020, the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic separated the research team, with one author leaving the country in haste and the other confined to a lengthy lockdown. Consequently, we made a methodological shift towards engaging the third district cohort via individual video-link interviews, before resuming co-present research in 2023 across different regions of the country in a second phase of research. This ongoing work is part of an ethnographic study of digital transactions in eight Asian countries, involving more than twenty researchers and funded by the Australian Research Council. The material presented in this article is selections from focus group transcripts and interview transcripts covering the first phase of research in Metro Manila from 2019–2021.

Shopping and forgetting in Santa Mesa

Santa Mesa is a commercial district in central Manila with strong community organisations, relatively good infrastructure, employment opportunities and a longstanding population of families. When asked about the availability and utility of digital transactions in January 2020, it was evident that members of this community were already engaged in online shopping practices, a preference spurred by the challenges of movement in congested Manila. Food delivery and ride apps were popular and the group noted how the number of operators was expanding, resulting in increased competition and special offers for customers. Although most apps offered digital payment functions, our mostly middle-aged research participants in this cohort still preferred to use cash on delivery options, due to issues of reliability and the quality of goods delivered, as Lesley explained:

I go online on Shopee because you don’t get tired, spend money on fare. You just scroll and they are cheaper compared to malls in Divisoria. Because their price is wholesale. But there are times when you get disappointed because the picture is different from the actual delivery…You can’t actually see or feel it. You’ll only know when it arrives. Then you’ll be surprised. But of course the price is cheap. You can’t complain. (Lesley)

Nevertheless, Lesley kept using online platforms because of discounts, special offers and rewards.

I'm also lucky enough to do Lazada, because I'm a suki (loyal customer). It was their anniversary. It's not a promo. They pre-selected customers on Showtime (a noontime TV show). I was one of them. When you pay after adding to cart, you only had to pay the shipping fee. I am quite lucky with Lazada. They acknowledge me being loyal. (Lesley)

The notion of a suki is a local term for a loyal customer who receives privileges such as discounts and credit from a vendor. Lesley naturally applies this reciprocal relationship to the Lazada platform and its offers and rewards programmes. Lesley has electronic payment options, including GCash, but noted that her generation preferred to use cash on delivery.

I haven’t tried loading up my Lazada wallet. So, you can actually shop online using GCash, as [Lazada] is tied to your GCash account…There are times you pay first but it's better to pay cash on delivery to be assured of the product. (Lesley)

While their use of payment apps in shops was negligible, a number of them had begun using the Home Credit app for online credit, principally for purchasing household goods and larger purchases such as smartphones. Along with the convenience of delivery services, and the increased availability of consumer credit, the privacy of digital transactions was valued relative to shared marital bank accounts. For example, Lesley emphasised the utility of platforms like Home Credit for purchasing items without her husband's knowledge, whilst Romeo, a taxi driver, used two different money transfer apps to redistribute income across two different families.

Liezel: Romeo is using GCash to hide the money.

Romeo: If I use Smart Padala, my wife will know who I send the money to. [In GCash] My wife won’t know I am sending money to another child of mine.

Liezel: It's an open secret, only his wife does not know the truth.

Romeo: Also when I extend help to my brothers–and you can’t refuse–I won’t let her [wife] know that I sent them money so that there will be no discussion. I did something good because it's my brother. So she won’t feel jealous. She won’t understand anyway so I won’t tell her.

Liezel: GCash allows you to use money in secret ways (laughter)

For this group, Smart Padala was the preferred app for sending money to relatives in the province, due to its network of payment agents across the country, which mitigated the need for digital access for the recipient. Research participants also used GCash regularly to make transfers to family members, to make church donations and contribute to community fund raising. Sometimes they would receive abot kamay from family and from neighbours, as Liezel described:

Liezel: Last November and December I bought some t-shirts for a cause as help for my friend's son who has leukemia. I approached my friends in Bulacan. Others don’t have online banking. I told them to go to 7-Eleven and send through GCash. That's the only way I can get money right away. The t-shirt can’t be produced when there is no payment. If you are faraway, GCash is ok.

Odette: Using GCash, I also use cash out. My son is far away. When I need money, that's where I go. Mobile is very important.

The participants shared that they regularly received requests for abono, pantawid and emergency transfers from family, neighbours and acquaintances. Dealing with these requests via their mobile phones was the preferred way of managing awkwardness around refusing requests or awaiting repayment.

Odette: It is easier because you won’t see if the person acts pitiful.

Romeo: If you say you can’t lend 1000 then he will ask for 500, then 300.

Odette: You can’t refuse him.

Romeo: One week, until the debt is settled, you don’t notice the person.

Liezel: When you bump into the person you turn back and say you forgot something.

Romeo: Paying means amnesia.

In this cohort there was obvious enthusiasm for the consumption affordances made available by app-based services, signifying the insertion of online shopping in everyday life. At the same time, digital payment systems were remediating already embedded practices of abot kamay by introducing expectations of constant connectivity and increased frequency of requests. As such, the affordances of digital transfers had to be reconciled within a social calculus that denotes these transactions as an essential component of nurturing and preserving relationships and personal ties via reciprocal logics of kinship and community.

Helping, loading and winning in Payatas

Payatas is a barangay (smallest unit of government) on the fringes of Quezon City, adjacent to one of Metro Manila's notorious landfills. The image of scavengers on the Payatas landfill, popularly known as ‘Smokey Mountain’, has become a symbol of poverty in the Philippines. The population here is more fluid, connected with migration from the rural provinces and occupations that are predominantly informal, working class and precarious. Our participants were a mix of young adults and senior members of the community. In Payatas, the principal use of mobile phones beyond communication was money transfers, rather than consumption. GCash was the most favoured platform for transferring money to relatives in the provinces, and also for receiving funds from periods of employment, principally in the informal service economy. The capacity to cash out GCash accounts at local stores was significant for a population which mostly lacked regular bank accounts. As was also the case with the Smart Padala service, the capacity to receive money using a mobile number was critically important for those who lacked the formal ID needed to use conventional services. Along with minimum balance requirements and account fees, stringent ID requirements have long been a barrier to the uptake of formal banking services among the working class. As Nida who worked for an NGO, explained:

You don’t need an ID. It's an easier transaction… within reach (abot kamay) even from a distance. I experienced it with my brother in Bicol (400 kilometres from Quezon City) who was admitted to a hospital. They have no one to borrow money from. My niece told me her father (my brother) was brought to a hospital. ‘We don’t have money.’ Ok I’ll send. I went to a Smart Padala outlet to send money. After two hours I got a call that they received the money. I felt at peace because it was easy. Easier than a bank which has many requirements. (Nida)

Sometimes it's a person's salary. For example, my husband is far away in Batangas. We exchange money. (Linda)

These redistributions bring to the fore another manifestation of abot kamay that digital money facilitates. Help is not just within reach in spatial terms, but also immediate, emphasising abot kamay's temporal dimension in emergency situations. Nonetheless, there are protocols to be observed, dependent upon the nature of the social relationship. Reciprocity is thus an important consideration when sharing mobile load balances (airtime) between family, friends and fictive kin.

Odette: They are not friends, those who ask for load persistently. [It's a] scam.

Eleanor: When a close friend tells you ‘I don’t have money now and I have to call someone, can I borrow some load?’ Of course, that person must be close to you. Like from your kumare (female godparent) ‘Auntie, I don’t have money please send me load’. Because like today, my neighbour is loading. When I’m away and I run out of load, I’ll text him and he’ll load me.

Odette: For example my friend. In their place, you can’t get load. They would message me ‘Is it possible for you to load me up because I need to call someone? Later when I get home I’ll pay you because there is no loading kiosk here.’ I’ll send her load.

Sharing of load is not always repaid in load or cash, as Eleanor explains:

Eleanor: Sometimes not money. Whatever is there, when we see each other: ‘Hey here's a present for you.’ It's because you’re close. Anything you can give.

Kin and friends are central to the circulation of both load and digital money. However, there are also instances when strangers become recipients (see Pertierra, 2010: 80), whether through charity initiatives or as what Barbara Andersen calls ‘phone friends’ (see Andersen, 2013). Among our research participants in Payatas, young people attested to sending small amounts of load or digital cash to strangers to initiate romantic relationships with other young people they meet online. If one party has no load to continue the conversation, then the person who has load will be obliged to send. From that interaction, it can progress to a romantic friendship, although in this mediated relationship one person may ghost the other. For example, Rodrigo, 18, shared his experience: “Once I met a girl online and gave her load to keep our conversation going. She got it right away and then we became a couple….We broke up when the load was used up”.

Where online purchases were taking place in this group, they were principally conducted via Home Credit, which was supplanting the 5/6 (20% interest) informal money lending system (Santarita, 2008). This community favoured Home Credit due to its far lower interest rates and longer payment terms. As Eleanor explains: “It's more difficult with 5/6 because the interest is higher and it charges interest monthly”. In this instance, digital transactions are remediating existing informal services, but their wider import perhaps lies in the novel capacity to enable multi-stage transactions across multiple platforms and multiple sites of exchange. An illustrative transaction chain of this kind discussed in the Payatas group came from Rodrigo, who was unemployed, unbanked and a user of GCash. Rodrigo's principal uses of the platform included spending time on a platform called Buzz Break, where he could accumulate points for engaging with specified media content: “I actually have a GCash wallet. There are Buzz Break apps, where you will get points when you just watch videos and news. Then you can convert them to GCash”. The points accumulated for boosting traffic on specified content can be readily converted to GCash credit and cashed out in pesos at the local 7-Eleven store. Rodrigo had also wagered his GCash when playing the popular online game Mobile Legends:

The party that loses on Mobile Legends pays for the GCash of the winner…You can be in the same place playing quietly but your opponents not. If you defeat him, he’d pay you through GCash…sometimes I win, sometimes I lose…Some don’t make a bet, some do. (Rodrigo)

Another participant also mentioned Mobile Legends, an online game platform owned by Globe Telecoms, where game winners receive transferable GCash credits from defeated opponents.

My son-in-law who plays Mobile Legends gets points and he also gets paid. He gets more points every month. He accumulates a lot because he plays Mobile Legends and loads up his Globe number. He gets points for GCash, too. (Erlinda)

Here, we can see two instances where GCash plays the enabling role in remunerating the timepass of unemployed youth as a resource, rendering downtime productive via boosting content and network traffic, while generating data points and servicing the attention economy—all of that in return for micro-payments in GCash. This is a micrological example of how the time and information aspects of money are refracted through datalogical practices to create new sources of value generation from marginal subsistence, or merely existence, in the Global South. Beyond airtime and data, the further essential input to this transaction chain, is the sociality of the users themselves, completing the composition of an integrated commodity form that generates profit across a bundle of Globe businesses (Globe Telecoms, GCash and Mobile Legends) (Athique, 2020). Rodrigo also mentioned betting on cockfights, a popular traditional pastime known as sabong, as another means to get GCash:

There is also one…It's just that I don’t have enough money right now. The fighting chicken…If you win there, you will have a lot of money…and you can transfer to GCash. So if you win…GCash comes from these games…Your bet of 200 will be 400. (Rodrigo)

Although this form of gambling is illegal, sabong contests are increasingly streamed via social media platforms, with wagers amongst spectators being co-ordinated online and paid out via GCash. In this instance, the combined affordances of mobile streaming and digital transactions allow for the remediation, expansion and dispersal of embedded forms of gaming and gambling popular amongst economically marginalised men in the pre-digital era. This has been a widespread outcome of the introduction of digital transactions in Asia, leading in this case to a brief attempt by GCash to capture the e sabong market via its expanded super app in 2023. For our Payatas cohort as a whole, digital transactions were introducing novel logics of remuneration and reward, while also extending the utility of existing practices of reciprocity and risk.

Lending, accounting and gifting in Quezon City

Developed as a national administrative centre during the 1930s, Quezon City is one of the major cities that make up Metro Manila, with its central district hosting a significant number of public and private sector offices, commercial districts and universities. Our Quezon City cohort was primarily comprised of upper middle-class freelancers in the digital economy. For them, the unfolding pandemic situation impelled the expansion of their online shopping practices from discretionary items like clothes, shoes and collectibles to include basic groceries, as shopping platforms expanded to provide necessities in their inventory. The regularised use of food delivery apps replaced the commonplace of eating out. As the tight curfew came into place across Metro Manila by mid-2020, the closure of workplaces saw a reverse in the flow of abot kamay, as family members in the rural provinces transferred funds to support urban relatives suddenly without livelihoods. By contrast, the digital and often transnational nature of their work patterns meant this particular cohort was largely able to continue their occupations, notwithstanding the flow-through from pandemic disruptions to clients in other parts of the world.

Access to transaction platforms is vital to freelance work and business models (see Soriano, 2021). This group uses a much more extensive array of transaction platforms, whether for consumption, or for personal and business-related transfers offshore via a wide range of national and transnational platforms, including PayPal, Viber, and Alipay. The use of international platforms was necessary to receive payments from offshore clients, whereas GCash was used to pay local subcontractors and make purchases. For personal finances, they had access to conventional banking, managed through phone-based apps offered by BPI and BDO. Having access to credit card accounts, they did not use Home Credit. Enmeshed in a larger ecosystem of digital transactions, this group of respondents recounted multiple experiences of missing payments, transaction delays, sums taken in error and other glitches in the ecosystem costing them money, delays and personal stress. The interface of mobile apps with conventional banks also raised significant concerns about the security of their accounts. Some members of this group were addressing this issue by using GCash as an intermediary platform between their conventional bank accounts and the other transaction platforms. They felt this added a layer of security to their personal accounts, as well as providing the most convenient means of paying for local goods and services, both personal and professional, under pandemic conditions. Justin, for example, said:

I keep my GCash and debit card separate. I’m anxious…it's extra layer of protection. I keep a little amount of money there. I’m afraid of getting hacked. I have a cousin who is an IT person and we usually talk about digital banking in the Philippines. He worked abroad and he told me how the Philippines is late in terms of digital banking…I think it's developing faster with the pandemic. But I usually apply an extra layer of security to feel safer. When I receive my income via PayMaya, then I transfer it to GCash. I withdraw that from GCash and then transfer it to my Philippine bank. It's an extra step but I feel safer. (Justin)

During the pandemic, local lockdowns and border restrictions not only resulted in limited mobility and access to daily provisions but also the loss of livelihoods. Millions of jobless Filipinos received some government ayuda (help) or cash assistance, but this redistribution was not enough for subsistence. Consequently, the expansion of everyday instances of abot kamay as a social mechanism of redistribution was evident among our research participants, as they participated in emergency initiatives to address the plight of those worse affected by the lockdown:

Jerwin: I was part of a donation drive and [GCash] is not only useful for collecting donations but also disbursing the money to the beneficiaries. Especially during the lockdown, we don’t have a way to reach them and so we used either online banking or platforms.

Jan: I’ve also started an initiative giving donations to senior citizens and other frontliners. During that donation drive what we use for receiving money is GCash and all the other bank apps. Also Paypal for those people who are abroad so they can send donations through us.

Miguel, a 28-year-old IT professional, talked about helping long-time friends way back in college and his previous work as a seaman:

I had former mates who could not board a ship during the pandemic until their savings were depleted. They asked for pantawid to pay for certifications and training…They also borrowed money. Not exactly for food. They borrowed money to be able to travel to Manila to sort out their affairs because at that time public transport was banned and getting to Manila was pricey. I had one college friend his business went bankrupt. They all paid me up.

When money is sent via GCash, the sender and receiver are notified via text of the transaction details, including names, amount, date, time and the type of transaction. These systematic transactional records were the reason that Miguel preferred GCash: “You’ll get a text so you have a record ‘You’ve sent 2000 to [full name]’. That's my record there's the date, time, amount and full name. It's for tracking.” The fact that Miguel gave such importance to the affordance of GCash for recording these interpersonal transactions unveils what would otherwise be an invisible practice of mental accounting for his social obligations. To contextualise this enumeration of reciprocity, Miguel explains his rationale for providing abot kamay relative to his financial position and the pandemic situation:

I don’t usually lend money because I don’t want to collect debt, the feeling of collecting debt is a lot of burden. For people who ask to borrow a huge amount I tell them, I cannot shell out that big amount, how about giving this much? It's still debt but in my head I know that if the debt is not paid at least it's a small amount. If it cannot be paid fine, it's help for them. If they pay, then ok. During the pandemic I extended their due date. Just pay when you have.

Tracking the amounts of abot kamay in play is a coping mechanism when debt is the necessary side effect of social obligations. Because Miguel clearly finds collecting these debts a social burden, we can infer that the automation of the process, and his more granular view and calculation of risk potentially helps to save face and sustain relationships. At the same time, this remediation of social accounting and the ethics of giving was clearly acculturated through the local notion of kakayahan (capacity), which denotes the capacity of the giver to give and offer help (Zelizer, 2012). Ultimately, the mutual recognition of kakayahan defines the limits and possibilities of abot kamay. Embedded gifting relationships also continued through the pandemic. Miguel, who could not attend the baptism of his godchildren, sent GCash instead. In the other direction, Isabel, a 45-year-old working mother of four, regularly received GCash gifts from her children's godparents during the lockdown. Just like Miguel, Isabel took note of the transaction receipts. Isabel said that the text receipts were like entries in a passbook which she showed to her children to let them know and remember who had gifted them. For Isabel, accounting SMS receipts was a way of personalising digital gifts. Here, once again, we see the expectations or norms of specific relationships becoming datafied and remunerated through the use of digital money. In Polanyian terms, social obligations are being dis-embedded and re-embedded as social transactions.

Digital transactions as everyday fintech

At the outset of our study in 2019, transaction platforms in the Philippines lacked the shopfront visibility of China's QR code payment systems and eCommerce was largely a middle-class pastime. Nonetheless, the everyday use of digital transfers in the Philippines was already widespread. Prior to the pandemic, the far greater uptake for money transfers relative to purchases and micro-credit suggested that digital platforms were becoming embedded as the financial hydraulics for reciprocity, redistribution and remuneration in the Philippines. During the pandemic period from 2020–2022, the critical importance of the three R's in sustaining immobilised societies became evident almost everywhere, as digital transfers enabled Abono, Pantawid and Emergency transfers on a massive scale. Digital transactions also allowed the labour pools of the digital service economy to sustain the more affluent segments of Metro Manila during the lockdowns, and the significant outsourcing economy to continue its functions in the global digital economy (Cabalquinto and Soriano, 2022). Thus, whereas the volume of digital transactions in the Philippines was growing even before the pandemic got underway, it accelerated during the three pandemic years to reach 42.1% of retail payments in 2022, with P2P transfers increasing much faster in volume at 91.2% per annum by mid-2023 and wage payments via transaction platforms (especially GCash) becoming prevalent (Ordinario, 2023; Raon et al., 2021). Thus, in a quantitative sense, we can infer that digital transactions were becoming embedded in everyday life before, during and following the pandemic.

In industry parlance, and its attendant literature, consumer convenience is generally taken as the product, cause and explanation for the uptake of digital transactions (see Steinberg, 2025). In the qualitative account explored here, what was common across all three groups was not convenience, but rather an emphasis on relationships in explaining their adoption of digital transactions. The complex weave of transactions brought into those discussions by our participants –varying in composition and accessibility across locality, age and social class– was explicated in idiomatic terms that consistently referenced the reciprocities that determine the meanings of exchange in the Philippines. In practical terms, digital transaction platforms appear to extend the utility of practices of abot kamay across both time and space for all three cohorts, while the embedded cultural basis of these practices provided the principal channels through which digital transactions were being embedded into everyday life. At the same time, the increased speed and frequency of digital transactions placed a burden of obligations upon participants that required a recalibrated calculus of the ethics and accountancy of sharing and giving. Remuneration increases in importance since it both enables and valorises reciprocity and remuneration, but does not displace those logics. It was also notable that only the Santa Mesa group, generally older and employed in the pre-digital economy, focused upon consumer benefits. For the younger cohorts at opposite ends of the social spectrum, the use of digital transactions was closely attuned to the strategic opportunities for remuneration arising from the digital economy, albeit at the opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum captured in our study.

Consequently, we can return to our initial questioning by concluding that: 1) the functional embedding of digital transactions is transforming transactional cultures in the Philippines, principally in line with growing exposure to the platform economy in the pursuit of livelihoods, but also as the accounting affordances of digital platforms engender a more fiscal logic when it comes to practices of abot kamay. And 2) the ‘always embedded’ meanings of exchange are clearly evidenced by frequent articulations of the ethical and relational dimensions of digital exchanges. The rich accounts of digital transactions offered by participants therefore provide useful insights into how the logics of reciprocity, redistribution and remuneration are inextricably enmeshed within the expanding network of transactions that structure digital societies in the Global South. These findings support the utility of a qualitative approach to digital economies, chiming with Polanyi's emphasis on the specificity of social change as a useful corrective to generic prescriptions of digital finance across the region. As digital transactions become embedded simultaneously in the rhythms of everyday life and the primary circuits of communication, these are equally important lessons for cultural studies.