TECHNOLOGY
Tonik builds on Google Cloud to accelerate financial inclusion, open banking innovation in PH
January 12, 2022 1:11 p.m.
SINGAPORE – Tonik Digital Bank (“Tonik”), the Philippines’ first digital-only neobank, is tapping Google Cloud’s advanced platform to accelerate financial inclusion for all Filipinos.
Leveraging Google Cloud’s expertise in scalable infrastructure, application programming interface (API) management, machine learning (ML) and data analytics, the bank has taken just 10 months to become an established leader in open banking innovation and delivering next-generation financial services.
Tonik, which is part of Singapore-headquartered fintech firm Tonik Financial Pte. Ltd., was launched in March 2021 after obtaining an initial rural bank license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Its digital platform provides core services like deposits with interest rates of up to six percent per annum.
There are also unique features for customers to create separate pockets of savings to meet specific goals over time called “Stashes,” such as affording a vacation, a college education, or accumulating an emergency fund.
“Fewer overheads from being branchless allows us to offer industry-leading interest rates that enhance Filipinos’ financial wellness, but our value proposition cannot be solely driven by lower costs. We have had to first earn the trust of consumers by investing heavily in a superior customer experience,” said Greg Krasnov, Founder and CEO, Tonik. “Google Cloud has enabled us to deliver frictionless and customer-centric services that allow Filipinos to easily embrace the financial system. This collaboration – having played an integral role in Tonik being entrusted with more than US$100 million in consumer deposits to date – will empower us to continue expanding our product portfolio and drive real societal impact across the region.”
Secure APIs Open Up New Possibilities for Consumers and Developers
With the BSP requiring banks to conduct due diligence by verifying each customer’s identity to prevent fraud and money laundering, applying for an account traditionally involves individuals having to first visit a physical branch to present valid government-issued identification (ID) to an officer.
This makes it difficult for millions of Filipinos to open accounts or make deposits. Unlike urban cities that have bank branches or ATMs at every corner, the people in rural Philippines – who account for 52.6 percent of the total population[1] – must travel long distances and arrive before the branch closes.
By using Google Cloud’s Apigee API Management platform to build and scale open banking APIs, Tonik could quickly integrate its mobile application with capabilities from third-party providers to make account opening and cash deposits fast, seamless and convenient.
To help Filipinos set up accounts in under five minutes – instead of hours or days, Tonik interoperates with Daon, its partner for automated customer onboarding and biometric authentication.
The process starts with Tonik asking the customer for a selfie and a scanned copy of their ID. Tonik extracts text from these images through Google Cloud’s optical character recognition (OCR) APIs and shares the information with Daon through another trusted API.
Daon then cross-checks the customer’s identity against official sources that issued the ID. This complex data flow is invisible to the user, who only needs to download the Tonik mobile application, verify their identity for account opening, and start banking.
Using APIs, Tonik also exchanges data securely with authorized ecosystem partners like 7-Eleven convenience stores and pawn shops to capture transactions in real-time. When a user makes a deposit at a 7-Eleven, which are readily available across the Philippines, they would see the completed transaction on their Tonik application and start earning interest immediately.
“Interoperability is core to our business strategy and everything on our digital banking application is therefore API-driven,” said Arivuvel Ramu, Chief Technology Officer, Tonik. “As our architectural foundation, Google Cloud’s industry-leading Apigee API Management platform allows us to unlock new digital channels, expand our business model, and generate new revenue streams. While APIs are not new to conventional banks, they tend to be private APIs tailored for a specific partner, which means third parties cannot reuse that API. In line with our commitment toward supporting broader ecosystem innovation, we have taken the private APIs that we have developed and converted them into public APIs.”
Third-party developers who want to create new features or services for Tonik’s ecosystem of partners and users can now reuse its public APIs to do so expeditiously. Apigee also provides a sandbox environment for developers to test and refine what they have created. Issues that would cause downtime can then be identified and rectified before the feature or service is authorized and rolled out to its intended users.
“Customers trust us with sensitive information like demographic and transaction data. As a custodian of data and a facilitator of open banking innovation, it is imperative that we uphold the highest standards of consent management and API security. By capturing and managing customer consent on what data we are permitted to share with authorized third parties, Apigee ensures that we comply with stringent regulatory requirements like PSD2. Apigee simultaneously secures our APIs to avoid data breaches by malicious users,” said Ramu.
Pooling Insights to Deliver Financial Wellness and Hyper Personalized Customer Experiences
Tonik currently serves more than 190,000 customers. To further advance financial inclusion and achieve its target of growing its active customer base to a million users by December 2022, the bank has built an intelligent data lake using Cloud Storage on Google Cloud and BigQuery to provide hyper personalized customer experiences and help many Filipinos access loans for the first time. With data generated from every event along the customer journey and residing across systems, connecting datasets and analyzing them manually is an uphill task. A cloud-based contact center software, for example, captures customer interactions and feedback across channels, while a core banking system captures deposits and withdrawals.
By unifying data across systems and applying machine learning, Tonik can, for instance, implement quick and accurate alternative credit scoring methods. This enables it to serve individuals who have not formally engaged with financial institutions in the past, have no credit histories, and do not qualify for traditional bank loans as a result. Tonik has recently pioneered a consumer lending product called “Quick Loan” without the need for credit histories or collateral, followed by approvals within 30 minutes and real-time disbursement.
“To drive financial inclusion and transcend physical distance, pivoting to digital-first business models and customer interactions are now a necessity,” said Ruma Balasubramanian, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud. “Tonik, through its mature API- and data-led strategy, is creating an open finance ecosystem that will accrue richer digital user experiences and flexibility for players to securely share and maximize digital assets – with Filipinos the ultimate beneficiaries. Google Cloud is proud to be a part of Tonik’s innovation journey. We look forward to supporting the bank’s continuous commitment toward serving the Philippines’ unbanked and underbanked, while it scales for growth and empowers the region’s fintech developer community.”
TECHNOLOGY
OPPO Reno16 Series 5G coming soon to capture every ‘barkada’ moment
7:11 a.m. July 26, 2026
Every barkada starts with a first. Your first spontaneous café hop with new college friends, your first weekend road trip together, or your first concert with people who soon become your favorite memories.
These shared experiences deserve more than a quick snapshot. They deserve photos everyone will want to save, share, and remember.
That’s why OPPO is bringing the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G to the Philippines. Built around its Pocket Studio imaging experience and the all-new OPPO Bubble with Camera Remote View, the upcoming smartphone is designed to help every barkada capture their first moments together without leaving anyone out of the story.
Professional-level imaging for every first barkada moment
The OPPO Reno16 Series 5G is designed to make everyday photography feel more effortless and expressive. At the heart of its Pocket Studio experience are a 200MP Main Camera, a 50MP Ultra-Wide Selfie Camera, and Dual View Video, giving users the tools to capture group adventures, everyday moments, and creative content with professional-quality results.
So whatever moment you are capturing, be it a barkada food crawl, a weekend getaway, or your first day on campus, the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G is designed to make memorable group photos easier to create than ever.
A smarter way to get everyone into the shot
One of the biggest challenges of group photography is making sure everyone, including the person behind the camera, gets to be in the shot.
The OPPO Reno16 Series 5G introduces OPPO Bubble with Camera Remote View, a first-of-its-kind innovation from a smartphone brand that reimagines the way people take group photos together. Working wirelessly with compatible OPPO devices, OPPO Bubble lets users preview the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G camera frame from another device and remotely trigger the shutter, making it easier to capture group shots without rushing back and forth to beat a timer.
It also opens up new possibilities for selfies and groufies by allowing users to take advantage of the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G’s powerful rear camera system while still seeing exactly how the shot is framed. Whether you’re taking a family portrait, gathering your barkada for a travel photo, or documenting a concert or special celebration, OPPO Bubble transforms the way shared moments are captured, making professional-looking group shots easier, smarter, and more inclusive than ever before.
Designed for today’s generation of creators
Designed for today’s on-the-go creators, the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G combines a sleek, premium design with advanced camera hardware and intelligent creative tools. Together with OPPO Bubble with Camera Remote View, it is designed to make group photography and collaborative content more intuitive, whether users are meeting friends at a café, traveling with their barkada, or documenting a concert or celebration, all while delivering professional-looking results without relying on a complicated camera setup.
Because every first barkada moment deserves to be remembered.
The OPPO Reno16 Series 5G is arriving soon in the Philippines, bringing its Pocket Studio imaging experience and OPPO Bubble with Camera Remote View to help users capture every first barkada moment together.
Visit the nearest OPPO store to check it out yourself. For more details about the OPPO Reno16 Series 5G, visit OPPO Philippines’ official website at www.oppo.com/ph/ or OPPO Philippines’ official social media pages on Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok for more updates and be among the first to discover the next evolution of smartphone photography.
TECHNOLOGY
Alibaba Cloud unveils Agent-Native Innovations at WAIC 2026
12:19 p.m. July 22, 2026
At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026, Alibaba Cloud introduced a suite of agent-native technologies aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of AI agents across industries.
Key announcements include the Agent-Native Cloud suite, designed to govern, optimize, and orchestrate multi-agent workflows while improving large-model inference efficiency. The company also expanded its open-source efforts with the release of the T-Head SAIL software stack, alongside new products such as the team version of its AI development tool Meoo and its first Qwen-powered earbuds, Qwen Clip.
These updates reflect Alibaba Cloud’s continued focus on building a full-stack AI ecosystem spanning silicon, infrastructure, platforms, and applications.
Alibaba unveiled the Qwen 3.8-Max-Preview on its Token Plan, Qoder, and QoderWork platforms. Boasting 2.4 trillion parameters, the model delivers impressive performance comparable to leading frontier AI models, with initial tests ranking it second only to Fable 5. The company has also announced the Qwen 3.8-Max will be open weight soon.
Cloud Infrastructure: From AI-Native to Agent-Native
Alibaba Cloud is advancing toward an agent-native architecture, providing a managed environment for building, deploying, and operating autonomous AI agents.
At WAIC, the company introduced two new products—AgentLoop and AgentTeams—expanding its existing AgentRun platform. Together, these offerings support the full lifecycle of enterprise AI agents, with built-in governance and control.
AgentLoop enables real-time tracing, evaluation, and optimization of agent performance. AgentTeams supports coordination and governance across multiple agents, allowing organizations to manage complex workflows. AgentRun provides lifecycle management, covering development, deployment, and operations.
Alibaba Cloud also introduced TokenWorks within its Platform for AI (PAI), available through PAI-EAS. The new service integrates request routing, inference execution, compute reuse, and scheduling into a single system, helping improve performance, reduce costs, and increase reliability for large-model inferences.
TECHNOLOGY
Peace of mind for busy pet parents: Xiaomi Smart Ecosystem keeps your pets safe, nourished
7:29 p.m. July 16, 2026
For most Filipino households, pets are (rightfully) considered full-fledged family members. Owners aren’t just owners anymore; they’re fur-parents now, they call pets their “fur-babies,” celebrate their birthdays, and worry about them constantly when we are away—just like real parents do and should.
But as the world moves faster and we find ourselves balancing office days, social lives, and daily errands, maintaining a flawless pet care routine can feel like a precarious tightrope walk. Are they eating on time? Are they drinking enough water? Is the house smelling a little too much like a pet sanctuary?
Fortunately for many Filipino fur-parents, raising a healthy, happy pet doesn’t have to conflict with a busy modern lifestyle. In the digital age, smart home technology is stepping up to bridge the gap, helping them provide consistent, reliable, and loving care even when they are miles away from home.
For those who need help keeping pets loved and well-maintained at home, Xiaomi’s got solutions that can completely transform your daily pet care routine, offering you peace of mind and your pet a healthier, more comfortable life.
1. Mealtime, Always on Time
One of the biggest anxieties of leaving the house is missing mealtime, and the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder 2 takes the guesswork and worry out of the equation.
This smart feeder allows you to schedule precise portions at specific times through your phone. Whether you are stuck in traffic or working late on a project, your pet’s feeding schedule remains completely uninterrupted. Plus, with its sealed design, every bowl of kibble stays as fresh and crunchy as the moment you opened the bag.
2. Encouraging Healthy Hydration
Just like humans, pets need constant access to clean water to prevent urinary tract issues—a common concern for both cat and dog owners alike.
The Xiaomi Smart Pet Fountain 2 solves this by mimicking the flowing natural streams that animals instinctively love. With its multi-stage filtration system, it ensures your pet always has access to fresh, oxygen-rich running water. It operates quietly in the background, making sure your pet stays hydrated throughout the day without interrupting your focus.
3. A Breath of Fresh Air for Everyone
Living with pets often means living with pet hair, dander, and those unmistakable “pet odors.” While most fur-parents have gotten used to the different kind of air at home, that doesn’t mean it’s always healthy.
To keep your indoor air clean and healthy for both you and your fur-baby, the Xiaomi Smart Pet Care Air Purifier is a household game-changer. Specially optimized for pet-owning homes, it quickly captures floating pet hair and neutralizes common pet odors, ensuring your living space always smells fresh, clean, and welcoming.
4. Keeping a Loving Eye from Afar
Even when all their physical needs are met, you’ll still miss your pets when you’re out—that’s just the ruff reality of being a fur-parent.
For clingy parents and babies, the Xiaomi Smart Camera C701 Pro helps you stay connected. With its advanced pet detection feature, the camera can intelligently recognize when your pet is active or moving around the room. Instead of constantly monitoring a live stream, you will receive a handy notification whenever your pet does something cute, letting you check in, say a quick hello, and smile during a busy workday.
The Ultimate Peace of Mind
At the end of the day, technology is here to help us give our pets the love they deserve more consistently—and with it, the peace of mind we need in knowing that they are happy and healthy.
By automating the essentials and keeping us connected, Xiaomi’s smart pet ecosystem ensures that your fur-babies are always cared for, healthy, and safe, giving busy pet parents the ultimate gift: peace of mind.
Ready to upgrade your pet parenting game? Explore the Xiaomi Smart Pet Care lineup today. Find them at your nearest official Xiaomi offline store, or shop online via Shopee, Lazada, and Xiaomi Online Store.
OPPO Reno16 Series 5G coming soon to capture every ‘barkada’ moment
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Alibaba Cloud unveils Agent-Native Innovations at WAIC 2026
