The agreement sets out a clear framework: better coordination, immediate information sharing and increased public awareness of the growing number of scams. This cooperation aims to secure everyday transactions for the 75 million GCash users. The findings are worrying: the Central Bank of the Philippines suffered $99 million in losses linked to cyber attacks in 2024. For their part, complaints filed with the CICC tripled in 2024, reaching more than 10,000 in 2024 (that's more than 27 per day). Finally, according to TransUnion (one of the world's three largest credit bureaus), 74% of Filipinos have already been targeted by a financial fraud attempt.
CICC brings its investigative and monitoring resources to the partnership, while GCash brings its national reach to the table. The idea is to shorten the time between the appearance of a new scam and the operational response: identification of the modus operandi, shared alert to the teams concerned, blocking of accounts involved in the fraud and information for users. This close collaboration involves daily exchanges of information and harmonized procedures. GCash reports that it has already blocked over four million accounts linked to fraudulent activities and deleted thousands of malicious publications. These actions reduce the scope of classic scams: fake "customer service" messages urging users to reveal a code, links to fake login pages, ads promising a quick win in return for a cash advance.
Beyond the repressive aspect, prevention is also at the heart of the approach. GCash and the CICC are committed to multiplying warning messages and hammering home the good habits to adopt: check the address to which an e-mail is sent, never communicate your identifiers via e-mail, immediately report a suspicious message in the application or to the authorities.