For five years the Philippine market for lending apps ran on a fixed guest list. The Securities and Exchange Commission stopped taking registrations for new online lending platforms in 2021, and whoever was already inside stayed inside.
That freeze is over, and the terms of the thaw are the part worth reading.
Capital, and a ceiling on brands
As reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 8 July 2026, the Commission has issued Memorandum Circular No. 20, Series of 2026, superseding the moratorium imposed by MC No. 10, Series of 2021. Everything below comes from that report rather than from the text of the circular. Per that report, entry is now priced rather than barred. A lending company needs a minimum of ₱10 million to run a single platform and ₱50 million to run five; a financing company needs ₱20 million and ₱100 million for the same. No company may own, operate or control more than five online lending platforms, and firms already trading get twelve months to reach the capital figures.
The clause that matters is not the money
Two other requirements in the same report will do more for a borrower than any capital floor.
The first is naming. Per the report, every platform name has to be registered and disclosed to the Commission, and companies have to identify themselves clearly on their platforms and borrower-facing channels. That lands on this market’s most durable habit: one corporation running a shelf of consumer-facing brands, retiring whichever has accumulated complaints and launching a replacement that looks unrelated. A five-brand ceiling attached to registered names makes that shuffle visible, which is not the same as making it impossible.
The second is pre-contract disclosure. Before a borrower confirms, the platform must set out the total loan amount, the amount that will actually be released, the interest rate, the effective interest rate, fees, the payment schedule and the term, and the borrower has to expressly acknowledge them. The Inquirer report adds that the Commission may build a centralised registry and keeps the power to suspend or delist a platform.
A freeze was never conduct regulation
A moratorium is a blunt instrument. It stops firms arriving; it says nothing about how the ones already trading behave. Trading identification and disclosure duties for an open door is, on paper, the better bargain.
The unresolved question is the same one every tightening in the region raises: what happens outside the perimeter. Apps that cannot meet a capital floor or a naming rule do not necessarily stop lending, they stop appearing where the rules reach — a displacement pattern this desk has described before.
This is a report on a rule change, not financial advice. Whichever company an app says will hold the loan, take that name to the regulator’s own records and confirm it there rather than trusting the screen.