More Pinoys paying for premium chat services

MANILA, Philippines —  Filipinos are spending more to access premium services on chat apps, particularly Viber, whose paid subscription segment grew by more than a third this year.

Rakuten Viber senior director for Asia Pacific David Tse said yesterday the messaging platform’s monthly active users in the Philippines increased by 17 percent this year, while its premium service Viber Plus grew at a faster pace of 34 percent.

Viber Plus costs P99 a month and allows users to edit and delete messages without a trace. The subscription also removes advertisements from the app and offers an invisible mode that lets users hide their online status while still seeing whether others are active.

Beyond messaging, Viber recorded a 97 percent increase in users on its dating service and a 21 percent rise in businesses on its enterprise channel.

The company is preparing to enter into a new partnership with the Department of Tourism to bring more tourism operators, including hotels and restaurants, onto the platform.

Rakuten Viber estimates that 41 percent of the Philippine population uses the app for work-related chats.

Professionals favor the platform for its end-to-end encryption, which protects messages and data exchanged between senders and recipients from access by third parties, including Rakuten Viber itself.