IF you can order food, buy goods, and pick movies or music online in the palm of your hands, why can’t you buy shares of stocks of Philippine companies?
In the middle of the pandemic, old-school stockbrokers John Gatmaytan, George Wong and Francis Diaz thought of developing an app like Netflix, Spotify, and Shopee for stock trading in the Philippines.
They teamed up with New York-based Wall Street technology guru Marcos Arnel Sicat to develop an app for the Philippine stock market.
After almost one year of beta testing with app development engineers from New York, Manila, to Indore, Luna Securities Inc. finally launched the mobile app.
Philippine Stock Exchange-registered Luna Securities formally introduced the Luna app in Sheraton Manila Hotel Thursday.
Luna AtlastIFS is a stock market trading mobile app for all Filipino investors who want hassle-free and fast trading transactions on the Philippine Stock Exchange.
How to invest in the stock market
Diaz, president of Luna Securities, said Filipinos aged 18 years and older could trade in the Philippine Stock Exchange, even if they are overseas.
First, they must download the app from the AppStore for iPhone or Google Playstore for Android mobile smartphones. Just search for “Luna AtlasIFS.”
To register in the app, investors just need to have the following information:
- Tax Identification Number
- Any of these valid government-issued IDs: Unified Multipurpose ID (UMID), Passport, driver’s license, or National ID
- Bank account from one of the following Philippine-based banks – Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), BDO, Asia United Bank, Metrobank, Union Bank and RCBC.
Investors should also be ready with at least a minimum deposit of P500 (US$9-10). This is the lowest minimum maintaining balance among stock brokerages.
It only takes 15 minutes to apply for an account.
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Stock market traders in the Philippines
According to a 2021 survey by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, only 10 percent of Filipinos have invested in various financial instruments. Of these investors, only one percent own stocks, bonds, unit investment trust funds (UITFs), mutual funds, and other managed investment schemes.
The Philippine Stock Exchange reported over 1.62 million market accounts in 2021.
On the other hand, there are 7 million Filipinos with accounts in cryptocurrencies in 2021. The volume of crypto transactions in the Philippines rose 362 percent during the first half of 2021.
Cryptocurrency transactions in the Philippines are legal, but the cryptocurrencies are not yet considered legal tender.
George Wong, Luna Treasurer and one of the Luna founders, said many Filipinos are averse to trading in the stock market because they feel it is complicated to open an account and invest their money.
Wong said Luna hopes to attract these technology-savvy Filipinos GenZs and millennials to venture into stock market investing, including those who had already experienced the volatility of cryptocurrencies during the plunge in 2022.
The risk in trading in stocks may be high, he conceded. But the risk is “more managed” than cryptocurrency because the industry is government-regulated, he added.
Is it secure?
In an exclusive interview with republicasia, Sicat said the IT infrastructure behind the Luna app is similar to that of the Robinhood app.
Robinhood is a Wall Street-based financial services company that facilitates individuals to trade cryptocurrencies, ETFs and stocks globally.
“The only difference is Luna app trades in the Philippine stock market only. Technology-wise, we are pretty much the same. The infrastructure behind Robinhood is similar to ours,” Luna’s chief techonology officer and founding member said.
He said Luna partnered with Google, which provided it with a secure network. The level of security is 256-bit encryption, which is considered “extremely secure” and is used by banks, the military, and virtual private networks (VPNs) to encrypt their systems.
“If you try to read it, it’s like garbage. If you try to snoop into the network, it’s not human readable,” Sicat explained.
“If you try to hack it, you can’t read our data. With our secured level, it would take you probably 100 years before you can read our data.”
