BUSINESS TECH | Rakuten Viber expands Philippine services as usage grows

Rakuten Viber reported rising usage of its messaging platform in the Philippines, as it expands into premium subscriptions, dating, business messaging and artificial intelligence-powered services.

At a media briefing in Makati City on Oct. 13, the company’s executives described the Philippines as a key growth market, citing increased user engagement and adoption of paid features. They also discussed privacy safeguards, fraud prevention and plans to connect travelers with local tourism businesses through Viber.

David Tse, senior director for Asia-Pacific, said the platform’s growth reflects a shift from everyday messaging to a broader range of services.

“What we are seeing in the Philippines goes beyond an increase in usage. We’re really seeing people using it from everyday communication to premium services like dating, increasingly, interactions with businesses,” Tse said.

According to figures presented at the briefing, Viber expects its monthly active users in the Philippines to grow 16.5% year over year. Average daily time spent on the platform is projected to rise 24%, placing the country among Viber’s fastest-growing markets and first among its top 10 markets for daily time spent.

The company also reported that paying subscribers to Viber Plus increased 34.3% year over year, while year-to-date revenue from the service rose 75.5%. The Philippines ranked first globally in active paying subscribers and
as a contributor to Viber Plus revenue.

Viber Dating’s monthly active users grew 96.9% year over year, while live business accounts increased 20.5%, according to the executive’s presentation. Tse also cited a 127% increase in meaningful business interactions, placing the Philippines second-fastest globally for that measure.

Tse said the company uses audience segmentation, local marketing and partnerships to reach different groups of users. Rather than relying on a single channel, Viber works with telecommunications companies and other organizations to promote services to audiences with different needs.

“There’s never one single channel that does it all, because we need to address every single audience,” he said.
He added that the platform’s expanding services are attracting users beyond its traditional working-class audience, with dating and other features drawing people into Viber outside regular working hours.
“Right now dating cut across all ages. I don’t feel it’s just certain segments,” Tse said.

Super app strategy tailored to local markets

Cristina Constandache, chief revenue officer at Rakuten Viber, said the company’s super app strategy does not mean offering identical features in every country. Instead, services are developed around local communication habits and market needs.

“The vision of becoming a super app when you have over 190 countries that you need to cover is not something that can be done from one day to one hour,” Constandache said. “But the idea of a super app the way that Viber looks at it is launching services and features that are relevant to the different markets that we have.”

She pointed to stickers as an example of a feature that gained traction in the Philippines because of how Filipinos communicate through images and emojis. Other features, including dating and business services, may be introduced or emphasized differently across markets.

“The super app is about adding convenience to you as a community of users and to enabling businesses at the end of the day to interact with consumers in a very natural way,” she said.

Constandache also stressed the need for users to approach artificial intelligence critically, even as Viber integrates AI-powered functions into the app, including a ChatGPT feature.

“But it doesn’t mean that all the answers that AI is going to give us in general are going to be the correct ones,” she said. “We must keep a very strong one of critical thinking, and we must always pass through a filter of what we know already, the information that we’re receiving and the way that we interact with technology.”
She added: “AI is here to facilitate our lives, but is not here to replace our thinking.”

AI features and user privacy

Nadav Melnick, chief product officer at Rakuten Viber, said the company aims to expand the platform’s
capabilities without compromising its privacy and security commitments.

“When we’re building these new features, how do we maintain the lovability of Viber? How do we make good decisions for our users to help them interact and use these features, but stay the same app, but also maintain privacy and security, and make sure that we’re doing it in a responsible way,” Melnick said.

He said Viber’s AI features are not activated automatically. Users must choose to trigger them, and only the selected text is sent for processing. Melnick also said the company does not train AI models using users’ data.

“None of the AI features that happens in the app are triggered automatically. Users have to select to use this, and only when they do that, it’s triggered and sent only the piece of text that they wanted to do,” he said.

Melnick cited Viber’s integration with OpenAI as an example. In the “Ask ChatGPT” feature, he said, names and user IDs are encrypted, preventing the AI tool from identifying participants in a conversation.

The company is also developing safeguards against scams and unwanted contact, including automated moderation, user reporting mechanisms and verification indicators for business accounts. Melnick said Viber uses both AI and human moderation to identify suspicious profiles on Viber Dating, while acknowledging that no system can eliminate every risk.

The company’s core messaging service will remain free, he said, as Viber expands its ecosystem through Viber Plus, Viber Dating, business messaging and Viber eSIM.

Tourism partnership and Viber Pay

Tse also announced an upcoming partnership with the Department of Tourism intended to make local tour operators easier to discover and contact through Viber business accounts. The initiative is aimed at helping travelers find operators accredited by the department, particularly during the fourth-quarter holiday and travel season.
“There are many, many small tour operators,” Tse said, describing a fragmented market in which travelers may have difficulty determining which providers they can trust.

Under the planned arrangement, the Department of Tourism would handle the accreditation of tour operators, while Viber would provide a channel through which travelers could find and contact participating businesses. Tse said further details on the accreditation process would be announced by the department.

He said the partnership is intended to improve the visibility of smaller operators, including those outside major tourism centers, while giving travelers a more direct way to communicate with service providers.

Tse also discussed Viber’s ongoing collaboration with the National Telecommunications Commission and local telecommunications companies to address spam and protect users. He said partnerships with government agencies should be measured by their benefits to consumers and businesses rather than by the number of agreements announced.

“Our aim is not to work with more government agencies,” he said. “It’s to ensure that we have achieved the fundamentals for the benefit of our user first.”

Constandache provided an update on Viber Pay, saying the product was ready for the Philippine market and that the company had obtained licenses required for its launch. However, final regulatory approval was still pending as of the briefing.

She said financial services require additional scrutiny because they involve users’ money and must meet applicable security and regulatory requirements. Melnick added that Viber Pay had launched in several other markets and was gaining traction there.

Viber’s expansion in the Philippines, the executives said, will depend on combining new services with its existing messaging platform while maintaining privacy, security and locally relevant features.

Full disclosure: All news articles published on the TechSabado website are written by human journalists, unless otherwise specified. Final text editing is also performed by human editors, with artificial intelligence (AI) used only to assist with additional grammar and style guide corrections..

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