Sending Money

[Jim Sibbick]

Hello Everyone.Most people who want to send money to the Philipppines will be sending to a loved one. IE Fiance or girlfriend. The absolute best way, in my opinion, to get the money to your loved one, is to open an account in your own country and send the ATM card to your loved one in the Philippines. Here are the details.- Shop around in the area that you live, for the best deal available, fee wise, for an account on which all the transactions will be from ATM's in the Philippines. In the USA, I have heard that there are some companies who allow free withdrawals from ATM's in the Philippines. This would likely be the best company to deal with but only if it is also easy for you to make deposits to your account.- Open an account in your name. Do not tell the bank that you intend to forward the ATM card to some one else.- Make sure your daily withdrawal limit is set to take advantage of ATM's in the Philippines that dispense large sums in a single withdrawal. For example, HSBC in Cebu City will dispense up to P40,000 at a time. However, you can't get P40,000 at a time if your daily withdrawal limit, set by your bank is say usd $500. If you can only withdraw usd $500 at a time, you will end up with something like P22,000, in a single withdrawal, depending on the exchange rate of the day. So, make sure your daily withdrawal limit is set at say usd $1,000- Have the ATM card sent to YOU then you forward the ATM card on to your loved one in the Philippines. Do not send the PIN number with the card. - Contact your account provider and tell them YOU will be using the card in the Philippines on a regular basis. Do not mention that someone else will be using your card.- Deposit cash, only as required. Otherwise, if your loved one is like most Filipinas, expect any extra cash to be withdrawn as well.- Make sure your loved one uses ATM's in the Philippines that allow large withdrawals. Such as the previously mentioned HSBC in Cebu City, which allows withdrawals of up to P40,000 at a time. Or at the very least, make sure your loved one will use an ATM machine relative to the amount that is to be withdrawn. That is, don't let them use an ATM machine that only dispenses P5,000 at a time if you are sending P15,000.The big advantages with this system are:- The funds are available instantly. Generally speaking, when you deposit cash to your own account at a bank, the money will be available at an ATM machine as soon as the teller has finished entering the deposit.- The fees are minimal. Whatever your bank charges for an ATM withdrawal in the Philippines is how much it will cost to have the funds transferred. I hope this helps someone!Regards; Jim Sibbick

[Mike S]

Great post and info Jim ...... as another alternative and for those only sending money once or twice https://www.remithome.com/remithome/common/home.dohttps://www.xoom.com/sendmoneynow/home?receiveCountryCode=remithome is a little bit cheaper and you can send peso's or dollars (if your recipient has a dollar account) with both companies but please be advised that there is a hidden cost in both companies ...... both charge an up front fee but then they charge an exchange rate (sending pesos only) of 1 peso less than the current street rate ...... now that doesn't sound like much but if you send $1000 or equivalent it is an additional $21.73 at 46 to 1 ...... so if they charge you $10 fee plus $21.73 exchange rate you pay in reality $31.73 to send $1000 ...... I have personal used both companies and money arrives usually with in 3-4 days (depending on the set-up on your end) I now write a check on my bank in the US and wait the 21 working days for it to clear and be deposited in my Philippine dollar account ....... there is no charge for this but you do have to wait 21 days so plan accordingly ....... I am sure there are other ways to send money but these are the ones I have used so I know they will work .....

[Jimbo]

I got a PayPal debit card. I make a transfer from my bank to paypal, it takes about 4 working days and its avaiable in the debit account.Only charge is $1.00 at the time of the withdraw at the atm. Works great!

[Jollygoodfellow]

I got a PayPal debit card. I make a transfer from my bank to paypal, it takes about 4 working days and its avaiable in the debit account.Only charge is $1.00 at the time of the withdraw at the atm. Works great!

That sounds pretty good, I use travelex, http://www.cashpassportcard.com/.Cost 3.75 Au per transaction but better than the $20 that westen union want.What do you think of the exchange rate pay pal are offering ?TomR

[Hosea]

I did the same as Jim, although I am wondering why you would want to have such a high daily withdrawal amount. As Jim said, our families there may take out more than we want them to. I can see maybe when you are there it may be better if you can pull out much more than $300 per day. When we spent 11 days in Manila going back and forth to the embassy, we ended up using our debit card and our Visa card some days. At first I sent a Visa debit card to my wife in the Philippines but now that she is here and we may need to give money to family there to take care of some of our personal business, we sent an ATM card so that there could not be any chance of more being taken out than we want. We have no problem trusting my wife's sister but she is kind of forgetful with some things she is not use to. Like the time she left my laptop in the taxi. Can you believe the taxi driver brought it back? That would never happen here. My bank charges us about $2 for each withdrawal but be aware your bank may charge for inquiries as well. I had Wells Fargo for a short time and they charged $1.50 for inquiries and $5 for withdrawals. I dropped them real quick. One other thing we did when I was there in the Philippines was to open a few bank accounts. We ended up with one bank (BPI). I wanted to have an account with them for a few years before we moved to the Philippines.

[colorguy]

One nice thing about remithome.com is that they take the cash to your recipient's house via courier. There is no need for your gal to go into town to pick it up, which is nice if she lives out in the sticks. The fee is 10.00 per transaction, but it's only $8.00 if you schedule it as a regular debit from your bank account. This is convenient if you give the same amount every month. I did not know that they charge one peso less than the exchange rate- I do not believe that it is represented that way on their website so that's a little sneaky. I will have to look into that. Still for small amounts it sure beats Western Union by an enormous margin.

[Jollygoodfellow]

One nice thing about remithome.com is that they take the cash to your recipient's house via courier. There is no need for your gal to go into town to pick it up, which is nice if she lives out in the sticks. The fee is 10.00 per transaction, but it's only $8.00 if you schedule it as a regular debit from your bank account. This is convenient if you give the same amount every month. I did not know that they charge one peso less than the exchange rate- I do not believe that it is represented that way on their website so that's a little sneaky. I will have to look into that. Still for small amounts it sure beats Western Union by an enormous margin.

I think that the problem with all money remittance company's like Western union and xoom etc is that they do not tell you what the exchange rate will be, I use a travelex card to send but again I never know what the rate will be. :welcome: Tom

[Mike S]

I can guarantee you from personal experience that both Xoom and remithome do charge 1p less than the current market value ........ I have emails from me to them asking why and the story I got was this ......Dear Mr. ********:Thank you for clarifying to us that the higher exchange rate you quoted was from the money changers in Cebu City and not from your U.S. bank. That makes sense from our experience. Money changers do have a big advantage in that they do not need to commit to an exchange rate 24 hours in advance. By contrast, remithome sets a Peso/Dollar exchange rate after 2:00 PM, Pacific Time, each day that is good until 2:00 PM the following day. Then, if exchange rates change overnight in the customer's favor, we increase the exchange rate. Since Philippine money changers always have access to the most current rates and do not need to commit them in advance, they can offer better rates.A lot of remithome customers initially have the same idea you have, that it is better to send U.S. Dollars to the Philippines and then change them to Pesos at higher exchange rates in the Philippines. Unfortunately, this is generally not a good strategy for two reasons.First, remithome charges a higher fee for U.S. Dollar transfers ($18) than it does for Philippine Peso transfers ($10). This reflects the higher fees that Philippine banks charge us for non-local currency deposits.Second, Philippine banks generally charge recipients a "deposit fee" of $5 or more when U.S. Dollars are deposited to their accounts, whereas they generally do not charge a fee for Philippine Peso deposits. Check with your Philippine bank to see how much they charge for U.S. Dollar deposits. Note that remithome has no control over the amount of this "deposit fee" and does not benefit from it.After considering both the higher remittance fee for U.S. Dollar transfers ($18 versus $10 for Philippine Peso transfers) and the Philippine bank's "deposit fee" of at least $5, it is unlikely that a higher exchange rate from the Philippine money changers could offset the extra $13 you would pay to send U.S. Dollars rather than Philippine Pesos.We used to get so many emails and calls from customers on this topic that we added an explanation on our Send Money page. To read our explanation about sending U.S. Dollars, log into your remithome account, click on the "Send Money" button at the top of the page, and then click the "What if I want my recipient to receive U.S. Dollars?" hyperlink in Step 3.There are lots of ways to send money to the Philippines, and there are advantages and disadvantages to each one. I hope this discussion has been helpful in at least giving you some idea about some of these considerations.If you have additional thoughts or questions, please call us at 1-800-919-0787 or email us again at customerservice@remithome.com.Thank you for trying remithome.Sincerely,remithome Customer Service

[Mr Lee]

My wife and I set up BPI ATM accounts and give our relatives one of our cards and then we do online transfers into the accounts from within BPI when they are needed. ......We also tell the bank to lock in the minimum balance so our relatives cannot go below the minimum and end up costing us service charges or the account getting closed......... I have had both happen to us all too often before we set it up that way....... One time the family even withdrew the account down until it was empty, even though we told them in advance to never to go below the minimum because that would mean no more money from us, yet they still did it anyway. :thumbsup: :welcome: :thumbsup: If I only had one bit of advice to give someone dealing with relatives, I would tell them to just put in small amounts of money at a time, weekly or monthly and watch it online to see how they withdraw it.BTW, BPI allows online conversions of dollars to pesos and transfers between accounts. I guess they also must have other countries money accounts but I do not know that for a fact.

[Guest Lee]

I got a PayPal debit card. I make a transfer from my bank to paypal, it takes about 4 working days and its avaiable in the debit account.Only charge is $1.00 at the time of the withdraw at the atm. Works great!

That's just the idea i had in mind was a Paypal Debt Card, glad I found your post Jim.Regards,Lee :714_full_of_crap: