The blockchain entrepreneur has testified on cybersecurity legislation, pushed back on a government blockchain mandate, and called for bolder tax reform — positioning herself at the intersection of technology and governance.

MANILA — Ann Cuisia, founder and CEO of blockchain firm TraXion Tech, has in recent months become one of the more prominent civilian voices weighing in on Philippine technology legislation — attending congressional hearings, publishing policy analyses, and challenging lawmakers on the substance of bills covering everything from government spending transparency to cybersecurity.

Cuisia, who has worked in financial technology and digital transformation for more than two decades, is best known for building platforms aimed at extending financial services to underserved communities. Her firm’s flagship projects include digiCOOP, described as the first digital cooperative platform in the country, which provides digital banking to cooperative members, and Gava, a crowdfunding platform for social causes. She also leads the Kadena Hub, a blockchain accelerator in Mindanao, and has been recognized as a Blockchain Champion at the Philippine Block Awards.

But it is her legislative interventions that have drawn wider attention. When an earlier version of the CADENA Act proposed mandating blockchain as the mechanism for tracking government expenditures, Cuisia publicly argued against the prescription, contending that governance legislation should be technology-neutral and focused on outcomes — specifically, that public funds be traceable and auditable regardless of the underlying platform. The bill was subsequently revised to remove the blockchain mandate in favor of broader auditability standards.

Writing in an op-ed after the revision, Cuisia credited the process as much as the outcome. Senator Bam Aquino’s openness to public input, she wrote, resulted in a bill that better reflects both accountability and innovation. She framed her own participation not as an industry advocate but as a taxpayer concerned that laws remain durable and free from commercial bias.

On cybersecurity, Cuisia appeared at a Technical Working Group hearing at the House of Representatives in February on the Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Act. In remarks published afterward, she flagged the bill’s concentration of authority in a single agency — warning that without explicit guardrails, the scope of such powers tends to expand incrementally. She also raised concerns about provisions relating to open-source data collection, arguing that cybersecurity agencies must remain anchored to protecting networks and infrastructure rather than drifting into content or opinion monitoring.

On tax reform, she has argued that the Philippines does not lack the tools to modernize its revenue collection — it lacks the political will to deploy them. She has called for mandatory digital tax compliance, a more empowered revenue authority, and alignment with the global minimum corporate tax framework, framing these as governance failures as much as technical gaps.

Cuisia is also a member of Concerned Doctors and Citizens of the Philippines, a civil society organization focused on technology-driven national development. She is a regular participant in fintech and blockchain forums across Southeast Asia.

Her growing profile in policy circles reflects a broader shift in how industry figures are engaging with legislation in the Philippines — less as lobbyists for specific commercial interests and more as technical practitioners pressing for laws that hold up against real-world implementation.