Apps

Tonik digital bank launches in the Philippines

Offers up to 6% interest rate per annum

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It’s always been challenging to open a bank account for most Filipinos due to a number of factors. Tonik, an all digital bank, aims to reduce the hurdles in opening an account to encourage people to save more.

Anyone can open a Tonik bank account using only the Tonik App (available on Android and iOS), an ID, and a well-lit selfie. Accepted IDs are: Philippine passport, Philippine Driver’s license, UMID, SSS ID, PRC ID, and Firearms ID.

Don’t have any of these IDs? You’re still eligible to opening an account. The account will be active for 12 months with a maximum balance of PhP 50,000. That should be enough time to secure an ID.

After creating an account, a user can easily put money in through the following: Debit Card, Online via GCash, BPI, Unionbank, and Coins.ph, and over-the-counter partners like 7 Eleven, Cebuana Lhuiller, Mlhuillier, and SM Payment.

Savings, interest rates, stashes

Tonik’s aim, like most digital banks in their early stages, is to get people to save. There are plenty of ways to save to encourage people to do so.

Time Deposit

Earns as much as six (6) percent per annum. Starting amount can be set to as low as PhP 5,000. There are also no early withdrawal fees or penalties.

Savings Account

Every registered account has a one (1) percent base interest rate per annum. Pay out is monthly.

Stashes

This is the fun part. Stashes are essentially digital piggy banks for specific purposes. Say, you’re saving for a smartphone or whatever shiny new piece of tech you have your eye on, you can put money in a specific stash so you can easily monitor how well your savings are coming along.

A Solo Stash lets gets users a four (4) percent per annum interest rate. Meanwhile, a Group Stash lets you team-up with another Tonik user for your savings goals earning you a 4.5 percent interest rate. These can be withdrawn anytime without a lock-in period.

Virtual card

Digital banking is also a welcome development with the Coronavirus pandemic still terrorizing the planet. Plenty of merchants have adopted an all digital solution. Tonik also offers a virtual card that you can use for online purchases.

Is it secure?

Tonik is asking for some personal data and, of course, your hard-earned cash. Naturally, you’d want to know if it’s safe and secure.

First, the money concerns. Tonik is supervised by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and your money is insured by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) up to a maximum of P500,000 per depositor.

For digital protection, the company outlines the following:

  • User account security is protected against fraud by the DAON server-based face check security feature. This ensures that no one can access a customer’s account by feigning his identity in case the account owner’s mobile phone is lost or stolen, even if the face ID is changed.
  • Passwords are safeguarded from the moment of their creation through RCA asymmetric encryption of account holders’ One-Time Pins and passwords. The level of encryption utilized for this feature is the
    same as that used by intelligence agencies
    and the military.
  • Customer data is stored safely in Amazon cloud with Advanced Cloud Security provided by AWSshield that effectively eliminates external threat like cyberattacks and data theft.
  • 256-bit encryption protection puts all transactions through secure channels that cannot be intercepted. Our security operations center monitors all customer-related activities for any possible external threats.

If you’re having any sort of difficulty navigating the app and its features, Tonik has the following customer support channels:

  • In-app chat
  • Tonik Digital Bank Viber chat
  • Customer Service email: [email protected]
  • Customer Service hotline: (02) 5322 2645

Why Tonik?

The name doesn’t immediately make you think of digital banking and the company says it’s intentional. Asked why they chose it during a media briefing, they said it’s easy to remember and doesn’t have any strong association with anything.

The company also has quite a nice and cool vibe to it. You’ll realize this with how things are worded when you interact more with the app.

PESONet transfers

As of April 27, 2021, Tonik users are able to transfer funds from a PESONet participating bank to their accounts. This service is initially available via RCBC, Landbank, PSBank and CIMB, with other PESONet member banks expected to add the service in the coming months.

Apps

Meta is reportedly experimenting on a gambling app

Users can spend virtual points on Arena.

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Meta does not have the most stellar of reputations. Despite offering the world’s most popular social media platforms, the company, through its various experiments throughout the years, continuously proves that it has other priorities than just providing the best for its users. Today, another reported experiment wants to take Meta to a new market that its users might fall into: the prediction market.

If you haven’t heard of the prediction market, consider yourself lucky. These apps, such as Kalshi, are basically just gambling platforms without the glitz of playing cards or the rigor of the stock market. Users gamble on mundane circumstances like the weather and more serious ones like war.

Today, as reported by The New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly asking Meta to develop a prediction app of its own. Interestingly, the experimental app, supposedly called Arena, will use virtual points, rather than real money. However, Meta has not ruled out real money — and hence, real gambling — in the future.

Meta is entering the industry at an extremely volatile time. The world is starting to crack down on prediction markets. Some users, for example, have been accused of using insider information to get easy wins on these platforms. Some markets have also accused these platforms of subverting anti-gambling laws.

SEE ALSO: Meta adds subscriptions for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

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foodpanda relaunches cult-favorite roast chicken brand after 8 years of persistent search queries

Heritage chain Andok’s returns to the platform, driven entirely by long-term user analytics.

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In the world of e-commerce and food delivery, platform algorithms usually dictate what consumers see. But occasionally, consumer behavior is so relentless that it shapes the platform’s strategy.

In a move driven entirely by long-term user analytics, foodpanda has officially relaunched Andok’s, one of the Philippines’ most iconic heritage rotisserie chains, back onto its platform after an eight-year absence.

The search bar as a digital wishlist

The decision to ink the partnership wasn’t just a marketing play. It was a response to an ongoing data anomaly. Despite being offline from the foodpanda platform for eight years, Andok’s consistently ranked as one of the most-searched merchants on the app.

Year after year, users treated the empty search results page as an unofficial wishlist. This persistent search intent gave foodpanda a clear, data-backed signal of pent-up demand.

Prior to the official digital rollout, teaser campaigns on social media validated this demand, generating thousands of organic interactions from users anticipating the return.

Bridging heritage flavor with digital infrastructure

For foodpanda, onboarding a merchant with this level of built-in demand fits its broader strategy of marketplace optimization and hyper-local network expansion, turning a heritage brand into another data point for how legacy retail plugs into delivery infrastructure.

For Andok’s, the integration works as a fast track to digital scale. A legacy quick-service chain skips years of independent app development and reaches customers already using foodpanda’s existing logistics network, on a platform they already check daily.

Andok’s built its following on charcoal spit-roasted chicken, a slow-cooked technique that’s stayed largely unchanged since the brand’s early days, alongside seasoned grilled pork belly.

More recently, the Dokito line extended that following into crispy fried chicken and chicken burgers, broadening the brand’s appeal beyond its original rotisserie format and giving foodpanda a menu with both heritage pull and everyday fast-food convenience.

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Apps

Turn conversations into completed work: Zoom launches ZoomMate

Agentic AI work surface to help people move from conversation to execution

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Zoom has officially announced ZoomMate, an agentic AI work surface to help people move from workplace conversations to execution without losing context along the way.

It will be offered in ZoomMate Basic (free) and ZoomMate which is priced starting at US$ 16.67 per month.

Unlike AI tools that solely rely on prompts or manual context, ZoomMate understands what was discussed to generate grounded, relevant outputs directly from meeting context.

The feature connects live conversational context to agentic search, workflow execution, custom agents, and AI content creation. It helps users overcome the friction introduced by fragmented tools and incomplete workflow by surfacing information across Zoom and connected business systems.

This creates deliverables from meeting and enterprise context, like presentations, documents, and spreadsheets. It also coordinates follow-though across workflows without switching tools.

ZoomMate capabilities

ZoomMate introduces advanced agentic AI capabilities that help teams move from insight to completion.

Agentic Search

With agentic search, it brings enterprise knowledge to every conversation. ZoomMate can search across Zoom, the web, and third-party systems to find the most relevant information for a project, account, ticket, policy, or business question.

Connecting to data sources such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Workday, and indexing across users’ integrated enterprise systems allows for surfacing information from enterprise files.

This includes customer records, open issues, service tickets, knowledge articles, project updates, files, and other business content.

Moreover, relevant context from Zoom Meetings, Phone, Chat, and other connected platforms, including Google and Microsoft, can be directly integrated into the flow of work.

Orchestrate

The next step is ZoomMate’s agentic layer enables proactive coordination and execution across systems, combining AI workflows with intelligent agents that can act, learn, and adapt within enterprise environments.

Agents can monitor ongoing projects, identify steps from meeting context, and automatically initiate follow-up actions for continuity.

Aside from that, ZoomMate can coordinate real-time task execution and can schedule events across Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook.

Moreover, it updates records, creates follow-up tasks, drafts customer communications, and triggers onboarding or support workflows.

Complete

Lastly, ZoomMate turns meetings into finished work. It automatically creates presentations, documents, spreadsheets, reports, and project plans from meeting conversations and enterprise context so teams can move from discussion to execution faster.

It leverages Zoom’s AI Productivity Suite to update deliverables as decisions evolve, keeping plans, documents, and other outputs current in real time without manual syncing.

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