The gifted GEMs, and reliance on influencer buzz, raised questions about the sustainability of Lyka’s business model. (She requested to use a pseudonym, as her boss was affiliated with Lyka.)
#Lyka gems to php free#
One influencer, Donna Rose, said she and other influencers received free GEMs to promote new merchants who joined the app. Several users told Rest of World that they first heard about Lyka through flashy influencer promotions, like actress Ivana Alawi’s Ford SUV stunt.
At its peak during the summer of that year, Baird claimed, the platform had 28,000 registered merchants and saw 1.2 million transactions per month. Well-known partner stores lent Lyka legitimacy: Brands like Fila, Adidas, and Victoria’s Secret all began to accept Lyka GEMs in 2021, as did gas stations and state water utilities. Uploading a photo to the app’s Instagram-style photo feed gave users 0.05 GEMs, and the same for receiving a “like.” One GEM corresponded to one Philippine peso, which a user could spend at the Lyka Mall or at tens of thousands of brick-and-mortar stores. Lyka leveraged support from influencers, who posted pictures of lavish experiences paid for with GEMs. But unlike crypto-oriented Axie Infinity or the Decentraland metaverse, Lyka’s game was social media itself. Lyka was an early entrant into the “play-to-earn” scene, a craze that gripped users in emerging economies. Investors included major retailers who’d partnered with the app in the country, Baird told Rest of World. Despite no direct experience with social media companies, he was able to raise roughly $20 million over three funding rounds before the app took off in 2021 in the Philippines, according to Crunchbase. “It’s a win for Lyka, another story for the local merchants and the users.”Ī former venture capitalist focused on emerging markets, Ryan Baird launched Lyka in 2019. I've seen how people sign up in thousands, and actually use Lyka for transactions,” she said. “If I was Lyka, I would really see as a successful beta test. Gladys Regalado, an acting member of the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU), a Philippine technology accountability organization, told Rest of World that she was deeply concerned at the prospect of Lyka spreading to other countries. Rest of World spoke with five early Lyka adopters, along with experts, to gauge the damage that the app left behind. In these people’s experiences, what began as a cutting-edge monetization model now looks more like a misleading fantasy. “Working in third-world countries, we deal with a lot more corruption,” said Baird over the phone from his offices in Silicon Valley, in an interview last October.īaird’s customers tell a different story. He blamed the app’s misfires on regulatory red tape and even the company’s refusal to pay necessary bribes, a comment he would later ask to retract. He said that Lyka was looking to relaunch there as a priority, and had been canvassing investors for an expansion into Indonesia and Malaysia in 2023, following a strategy to target low-income earners.
Speaking to Rest of World, Lyka’s CEO and founder Ryan Baird described Lyka’s run in the Philippines as a success. Over 4.5 million people had downloaded Lyka, according to figures shared by Data.ai, and tens of thousands of merchants - including international brands like Ford and Guess - were accepting Lyka tokens when the app stopped operations. The result: Active users were left with stores of worthless in-app currency. That month, the central bank of the Philippines ordered Lyka to suspend all transactions, saying the company wasn’t properly licensed as a payment service. By January of 2021, Lyka had soared to become the third most-downloaded app in the Philippines, beaten only by TikTok and Facebook.īut Lyka’s miraculous economy came to a screeching halt in July, 2021, just seven months after its popularity took off. In one viral video, a celebrated actress tearfully gifted her mother a nearly $70,000 Ford SUV - all paid for upfront, she claimed, with the Lyka currency. Even more interestingly, the coins were redeemable in real life, for anything from a luxury spa treatment to paying a telecomm or water bill. A basic task like uploading a photo earned users GEMs, the in-app currency. On the app, there was a reward for every interaction. Lyka promised the impossible: earn money just for being online. In early 2021, in Manila, a social media app called Lyka seemed to appear out of nowhere.
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