The Supreme Court restored an NPC ruling in a borrower's contact-list complaint

A borrower filed a privacy complaint against FCash, operator of the Fast Cash app, after alleging that the lender accessed her phone contacts without authority. In the account reproduced by the Supreme Court, friends and co-workers were told about the loan and were described as guarantors who could be pressured to pay. She said the messages damaged her reputation. The National Privacy Commission proceedings did not end in a settlement. FCash did not file the responsive comment ordered during the investigation. The NPC later awarded the borrower PHP15,000 in nominal damages and forwarded the case to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute the company under the Data Privacy Act provisions identified in the decision. The Court of Appeals then reversed that outcome. It treated the borrower's screenshots as inadmissible because they had not been authenticated under the rules for electronic evidence. The dispute reached the Supreme Court on whether that objection could be raised after FCash had not made it during the NPC proceedings. In its 13 August 2025 decision, the Supreme Court said the objection had been waived. The evidence had been available during the NPC case, but FCash neither objected at the proper stage nor raised the issue in its motion for reconsideration. The Court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the NPC decision and resolution. The ruling preserves the result in this particular record. It does not mean that every allegation about contact access or third-party messages is automatically established without evidence. The public decision also does not show what later happened to the borrower's loan account or whether any separate remediation followed.