Philippines sees high SMS scam rates and rising AI messaging usage

A new report by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Gogolook, and Mastercard reveals that 69% of financial scams in the Philippines are conducted via text or SMS. While this is a decrease from 75% in 2025, SMS remains the primary channel for scammers. Other common methods include instant messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram at 39%, social media platforms at 36%, and phone calls at 33%.

Simultaneously, the Philippines has emerged as one of the top three global markets for artificial intelligence feature usage on the Rakuten Viber messaging platform. Young professionals, particularly those aged 25 to 44, are driving this adoption by using AI for tasks such as translation, conversation summarization, and drafting replies. Viber has addressed privacy concerns regarding these tools by stating they do not use user data to train AI models.