[3] Other than Manila, the neobank operates out of three hubs based in Singapore, Kyiv, and Chennai.
[2] Tonik was founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneur Greg Krasnov at a time when the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Philippines' central bank, was working to improve financial inclusion in the country.
[7] Tonik received its rural bank license from the BSP in December 2019 and launched a pilot test of its proprietary mobile app in the fourth quarter of 2020.
[10] Tonik was issued an official digital bank license by the BSP in June 2021, becoming the first private neobank in the Philippines to do so.
[1] Upon Tonik's commercial launch, for example, the Manila Bulletin[1] and London-based magazine Financial IT both noted that Tonik's completely branchless way of banking was “set out to fundamentally disrupt the Filipino retail banking industry.”[1][12] Tonik’s offering of high-interest rates also gained the attention of the Philippine business press, with Philippine Daily Inquirer referring to the bank's rates as “staggering.”[13][14] The Philippine Star later noted that the neobank breached the PHP 1 billion in retail deposits mark very early by partnering with Globe myBusiness and aligning its launch with the financial inclusion efforts of the BSP.