International Money Transfer Policy: The Philippines

Jan 03 2022

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is the central bank of the Republic of the Philippines, which regulates remittance fund transfers through banks, private remittance companies, and other remittance agents.

From BSP Foreign Exchange Regulations dated by June 2019:

For cross-border transfer involving foreign currency, a person may freely bring into or take out of the Philippines foreign currency and other bearer monetary instruments (e.g., travellers’ checks, other checks, drafts, notes, money orders, bonds) in amounts up to USD 10,000 or its equivalent in other foreign currencies.
In excess of the USD 10,000 threshold, a prior written declaration is required using the foreign currency declaration form.
Said form is available at the Bureau of Customs Desk in the arrival/departure areas of international ports in the Philippines or can be downloaded from the BSP website (Annex K of the FX Manual).*

Documents

If a person wishes to bring or send more than the equivalent of USD 10,000, a written declaration must be made in the form of the BSP’s “Foreign Currency and Other FX-Denominated Bearer Monetary Instruments Declaration Form” which may be downloaded from the website. Residents of the Philippines are taxed on any foreign income. Non-residents are taxed only on income originating in the Philippines. All sums exceeding PHP 400,000 (USD 7,600) must be reported to the Anti-Money Laundering Council.

Bank wire fees

According to open-source info, a commission of approximately PHP.150–250 (USD 3–5) or sometimes equivalent to 10 USD. And banks in the Philippines have a $25 additional charge for foreign wire transfer services.

Prepaid and credit cards

You can easily use the most popular cards, Mastercard and Visa, in the Philippines. You might be charged fees, such as foreign transaction fees. A fee of 3% per transaction may apply depending on your credit card. That’s up to $90 in fees for $3,000 spent with your card. The popular prepaid debit cards in the Philippines are PayMaya Visa, Amore Visa Prepaid payWave, GCash Mastercard, and others.

ATMs limits and fees

A good number of international banks are represented in the Philippines, such as HSBC, ANZ, and Citibank. If you’ve set a maximum daily cash withdrawal limit with your home bank, you’ll find that it’ll apply in the Philippines too. Otherwise, the ATM providers rules will apply instead. Quick research shows that these vary between different banks. For instance, the Bank of the Philippine islands limits its customers to between PHP 20,000 (USD 380) and PHP 50,000 (USD 960) per day, with a maximum of 6 withdrawals allowed daily. Usually, ATMs apply up to a 5% fee on the transaction for many cards.

Online transfer services

An interesting fact is that according to the 2018 World Bank report, the Philippines is one of the leading places in the largest remittance-receiving nation, with most of those remittances coming from Philippinos working abroad. Also, the infrastructure of offline money services is very slow, and online transfers are more desirable.

Here are the top money online transfer services in the Philippines, with their fees.

According to the information provided by BSP, the E-money ecosystem in PH looks like this:

112 banks with electronic banking operations (internet and/or mobile-based)
54 of these are rural banks that provide mobile-based e-money services
24 e-money issuers (banks)
3 e-money issuers (non-banks/ others)
3 e-money issuers (non-banks/ others)
Over 15,000 cash-in/cash-out agents
About 8 million active e-money subscribers
188 million e-money transactions ( total of inflow and outflow)
PHP 308 billion e-money inflow and PhP305 billion outflow.

Transfer money to the country

As we mentioned before, residents of the Philippines are taxed on any foreign income. Over the past years, the Philippines made stricter tax guidelines on gifted money. Gifts over PHP 250,000, or about USD 4,795 as of August 2019, need to be reported and will be taxed at a rate of 6%.

Virtual currency

The virtual currency environment in the Philippines is loyal and regulated by BSP. The BSP established a formal regulatory framework for VC Exchanges — Circular №944 dated 6 February 2017. Virtual currency exchanges are companies or businesses that change VCs into fiat currency (and vice versa). BSP has required domestic crypto exchanges to register as remittance and transfer companies.

Crypto exchanges should have a virtual currency exchange license from the Philippines’ Central Bank to operate.

For cross-border transfers involving Philippine pesos, a person may freely bring into or take out of the Philippines or electronically transfer legal tender Philippine currency and other monetary instruments in amounts up to PHP 50,000 (USD 956). Prior BSP written authorization is required in excess of the PHP 50,000 limit. The BSP typically allows the transfer of Philippine currency in excess of PHP 50,000 for limited purposes only: (i) testing/calibration of money counting/sorting machines; (ii) numismatics (collectors of currency); and (iii) educational purposes.

STICPAY for the Philippines

Some of Sticpay’s specific features which might be interesting for Philippinos are the opportunity to open an account in the local currency, PHP, withdraw money to local banks in the Philippines, and the prepaid STIC card.

Sources:

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