Today I learned, Wise have converted our Philippine Jars into real Philippine bank accounts with an account number at Wise Pilipinas, Inc. and a BRSTN number. What does this mean? It means that we can finally send money from our Philippine bank accounts to our Wise Account and thereby get our money out of the Philippines without Western Union or other bank International transfer fees, it's about bloody time. I just sent a 500 peso test from my Maya account to my Wise account, transferred in seconds and worked perfectly, freakin brilliant at last!!!
I should have mentioned that the Maya to Wise transfer cost the usual 15 PHP at the Maya end, obviously that's not a lot if you were sending large amounts.
Thanks for all that I'm still trying to verify my id on shopee... so won't let me transfer there. But I did a transfer from BPI (Instapay P10 Charge up to P50,000 trf ) worked fine
Yeah the banks should work fine, a few years ago Grab stopped accepting my Wise card as an attached payment method and I think Lazada stopped accepting it as well, but Wise are issuing cards in the Philippines now for customers that sign up in the Philippines so this kind of stuff should change, I can't even view Shopee while here in the UK but I do use Lazada a lot and I've recently used AliExpress to buy a couple of bits of junk for dispatch to the UK. I take it you are a seller on Shopee which is why you'd like to transfer money out? P10 is better than the P15 that most Maya Instapay transactions cost, and Metrobank are a bugger as well for transaction fees.
I was a seller but I had to stop it - think they wanted me to register with the BIR or something and verify my id which I struggled with... still am!
Actually, I use shopee pay to pay for all kinds of crap aside from day to day purchases of foods and other bits that are unavailable or not competively priced here - GCash get's on my nerves - Shopee Pay just seems to work easy and is very seldom out of action.
My kids use Shopee a lot but also tik tok and not so often Lazada, do you have Grab Taxis and Grab Mart where you are, I use Grab Mart for beer sometimes a lot and sometimes not so much.
Grab pretty much makes owning a car a pointless proposition, you can go most places apart from very long distance like you can't order a Grab from Manila to Baguio but inside Metro Manila you can go anywhere at reasonable fees in a good reasonably new car with someone that can drive safely or safe enough given their stake in the vehicle they are driving. And no worries about running over a local and having to pay for their family for the rest of your life.
BPI and I think most other banks have now waved the fees on Instapay transfers under P50K Just transferred P10k to Wise at zero cost - much easier now
Metrobank still have an 18 peso charge and Maya, ATM fees in Siquijor were 25 peso. Glad you've got the Wise upgraded Philippine bank account now.
