(UPDATE 2): GCash CEO Martha Sazon has issued a statement, and said that GCash was not hacked based on their investigation. She also assured that “any deduction from a GCash account will be adjusted before 3PM today.”

(UPDATE 1): GCash is reportedly working for some people, and those trying to log in are asked to verify their identity with a live selfie.

GCash appears to be down and encountering issues today (May 9) as users, including us, could not access the Wallet platform in the meantime. Reports said that GCash has been under maintenance since 2AM, and the app is still inaccessible as of this writing.

While we’re reaching out to GCash to get a clearer understanding of the situation, we have been seeing reports that GCash might have been hacked. According to the posts we saw on social media, a number of GCash users allegedly lost money due to unauthorized transactions made involving multiple East West Bank and Asia United Bank (AUB) bank accounts. Some victims lost as much as Php 50,000.

According to the victims, the unauthorized transactions were made without the use of any OTP or email notification. Based on our initial findings, the GCash hacking incident appears to be similar to what happened to BDO back in 2021, where BDO said that “a sophisticated fraud technique” has affected some of its clients.

We’re waiting for GCash to issue a statement on the issue–and whether the app was hacked and caused these unauthorized transactions that bypassed security measures like OTPs. Aside from OTPs, GCash also has verification features that include submitting a selfie and a photo of your valid IDs before making your account verified to do large transfers.