Key Facts
Coins.ph announced on 19 May 2026 the expansion of its QRPh crypto payment functionality to include Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), alongside existing stablecoin support.
The integration allows payments at an estimated 700,000 QRPh-enabled merchants across the Philippines using the national QR code standard developed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
Crypto balances are automatically converted into Philippine pesos at checkout, removing the need for manual pre-conversion by the user.
The launch builds on Coins.ph’s earlier 2026 QRPh rollout, which made it the first digital wallet in the Philippines to integrate direct crypto payments into the national QR framework via USDT and USDC.
Quoted on the launch is Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.ph; the company is a BSP-licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider and Electronic Money Issuer.
Coins.ph has expanded its QRPh crypto payment functionality to include Bitcoin and Ethereum, the Manila-based digital wallet announced on 19 May 2026. The addition extends a system that already supports stablecoin payments — primarily USDT — into the two largest crypto assets by market capitalisation, and runs across the estimated 700,000 merchants currently enabled on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ national QRPh standard.
How the integration works
The user-facing experience is unchanged. A Coins.ph user scans a QRPh code at any participating merchant, selects which asset to pay with, and the wallet converts the chosen crypto balance into Philippine pesos at checkout. The merchant receives PHP into their existing QRPh-enabled account; the user spends in BTC, ETH, USDT or USDC without manually pre-converting funds.
QRPh itself is a national interoperable QR standard developed by the BSP, designed to let consumers and merchants transact across banks and e-wallets through a single QR code rather than a fragmented set of provider-specific codes. The standard already underpins a substantial share of digital retail commerce in the Philippines — Coins.ph said in its January 2026 rollout that the platform alone processed nearly ₱30 billion in QRPh transactions in December 2025.
Building on the stablecoin first move
The Bitcoin and Ethereum launch builds on Coins.ph’s earlier 2026 rollout of QRPh-compatible stablecoin payments, which made it the first digital wallet in the Philippines to enable direct crypto payments through the national QR code framework. The initial USDT integration generated what the company describes as substantial transaction volume, demonstrating consumer appetite for crypto-based payments inside an existing payment infrastructure rather than through a parallel acceptance network.
The structural reason matters. The Philippines is one of the largest remittance markets globally, with approximately US$38 billion in annual inflows. Stablecoins have increasingly been used for cross-border transfers, allowing recipients to receive value in digital dollars and now spend it directly across the local economy without additional conversion steps. The Coins.ph wallet effectively closes the loop between remittance receipt and merchant payment within a single app.
What Bitcoin and Ethereum add
Adding BTC and ETH addresses a different user segment than stablecoin payments. Stablecoin spending typically draws on dollar balances held for stability or for receiving cross-border transfers; BTC and ETH spending draws on portfolios held for investment exposure. By auto-converting at checkout, the wallet gives those holders a route to spend without first off-ramping to PHP — a friction point that has historically discouraged retail crypto users from treating their holdings as spendable.
Wei Zhou, Chief Executive Officer of Coins.ph, framed the launch as a redefinition of wallet utility. “The addition of new tokens to our QRPH crypto payments feature is a great achievement following the landmark introduction of USDT payments for the Philippine financial landscape,” Zhou said. “We aren’t just adding new tokens; we are redefining what a digital wallet can do. This is the future of finance in action and we’re making the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies a functional part of the Filipino daily life.”
Regulatory positioning and adoption context
Coins.ph operates as a licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider and Electronic Money Issuer under BSP regulation. That dual authorisation matters: the VASP licence covers the crypto-asset side of the wallet, while the EMI licence covers the peso conversion and merchant settlement leg. Together they let the company run the full checkout flow inside a single regulated entity rather than partnering with a separate PHP payment processor.
The Philippines remains among the leading markets globally for crypto adoption, with estimates indicating over 15 million users — approximately 13.4% of the population. The launch sits inside the same broader pattern as Binance Pay’s QR payment expansion announced earlier in May, which set a target of more than 10 countries by Q3 2026 by riding existing national QR rails rather than building parallel acceptance networks. The two moves describe the same strategic bet from different angles: that crypto payments scale fastest when they integrate into infrastructure consumers already use.
FAQ
What is QRPh and how does Coins.ph use it?
QRPh is the Philippines’ national QR code standard, developed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to enable interoperable payments across banks and e-wallets. Coins.ph integrates with the standard to let users pay at QRPh-enabled merchants directly with Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT or USDC, with the wallet automatically converting the chosen crypto balance into Philippine pesos at checkout.
How many merchants accept Coins.ph crypto payments?
The integration enables crypto payments at an estimated 700,000 QRPh-enabled merchants across the Philippines, covering small local businesses through to major retail chains. Merchants receive Philippine pesos and do not need to handle crypto directly.
Why does this matter for remittances?
The Philippines receives approximately US$38 billion in annual remittance inflows. Stablecoins are increasingly used for the cross-border leg, letting recipients hold value in digital dollars rather than convert to local currency immediately. By adding QRPh crypto payments, Coins.ph allows recipients to spend that value directly across the domestic economy without an additional conversion step.
The deeper strategic question raised by Coins.ph’s expansion is whether merchant-side acceptance becomes a meaningful differentiator between digital wallets in the Philippines, or whether QRPh’s interoperability makes that competition irrelevant. Either way, the rollout takes one of the world’s most active retail crypto markets a step closer to a working answer to a question the industry has been asking for a decade: what does it actually take to make crypto spendable in everyday commerce?
