Money Transfer within and to the Philippines

 

Everybody who is married to a Filipina sooner or later learns about the way how the family responsibilities work in the Philippines. The most important thing is, as there is no State controlled pension system for the old people, it is the responsibilty of the children to support their parents or other family members when they do not have any money available. Of course every Filipina married to a foreigner is considered to be wealthy and everybody will ask her to bear the majority if not all of the support now.

So, even when it is possible to make it clear to your wife and to her family that you have earned or are earning your money still the hard way by doing some work, you still will be required to take part in the support of the family of your wife. So you will soon find out that it is quite difficult and quite expensive to transfer money to the Philippines using the normal banking system.

Problem 1: The family does not have a bank account at all. This is quite common as in the Philippines every bank request a minimum number of Pesos to stay in the accounts. When this money is withdrawn, the account is closed.This is the typical situation when there some urgency coming up, after that there is no account left anymore.
Solution: There are services available which accept money and do a door to door delivery. One example is PCI Padala, located in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Similar services are available in other countries as well.
Problem 2: The Philippine account handling bank does not have any relation with your local bank. So a direct bank transfer is not possible.
Solution: All transfers to local banks can be accomplished via the PNB, the Philippine National Bank. A similar service is offered through the PCI Padala Bank as well. Simply specify on the transfer form that the recieving bank is different, specify the name and the corrct account number, and that is all. This will take a bit longer then to arrive, but it does.
Problem 3 All money transfer abroad is monitored through the banks. In case that you transfer more than the equivalent of DM5000,- the banks and the State becomes suspicious and will contact you if there is some money laundry going on.
Solution: Never transfer more than DM5000,- per month
Problem 4 The account number your family gave to you was not the account number but the card number. Most accounts are handled via ATM machines in the Philippines, and the account owner have corresponding cards which they can use to withdraw the money. The number on those cards of course is different to the account number. Unfortunately, when asked for the account number, most Filipinos simply take their card and give you that number. Consequently your money arrives in the Philippines correctly, even at the right bank, but is never assigned to the correct account.
Solution: First thing of course is to avoid that problem by asking explicetely for the account number, and tell them not to read from the card. But when it has happened, the card owner has to go the branch or to the main bank office and explain what has happened. Normally this is sufficient to route the money to the correct account.
Problem 5: You have transferred a lot of money to the Philippines which should last for at least three month. You did this to save the expensive fees for the money transfer. You will soon find out that after one month all the money is gone. There is always some kind of ermergency which forces them to withdraw more and more of your money until all is gone.
Solution Well, the first solution is to transfer the money piece by piece, but this is very expensive. The other solution is to transfer money to an account which can only be handled by you. This means that you still can forward within the Philippines the necessary moeny to the corresponding target accounts.
Problem 6: The money transfer is quite expensive, and this does not depend on the amount to be transferred but is the fee for the handling of that transaction.In our case we have to pay around DM55,- per transaction.
Solution 1: Again PCI Padala in Frankfurt offers a lot cheaper money transfer to the Philippines. Transfer to a target account will only cost you less than DM13,-. To open this possibility you have to register with PCI Padala the target accounts in the Philippines. For each of these accounts you will get a corresponding "ID" number, which you have to use when you transfer money to the Padala account. Via this ID you can even identify a door to door transaction.
Solution 2: There are more and more companies available to arrange money transfer to the Philippines. We just found a new company which will transfer money via Internet to the recipient within 12 hours. The money is deducted from your credit card account (based on USD!), the transfer will cost you 14 USD. The Internet address of that company is: http://www.philsite.com/index2.html
Problem 7 You have an account in the Philippines, you have transferred a lot of money there, but now nobody can access that money as only you in person can withdraw or transfer money to other accounts.
Solution: PCI in the Philippines is the first bank to offer accounts which can be handled through the internet. This means that you can transfer money to your own account, and then forward portions of that money to all target accounts within PCI which are registered with your account just using the internet. Access to these features is secured by a "Fastphone Access Number (FAN) which you can change as you want and which can be used as well for phone access to your account.

Experience:

Of course nothing works as originally understood. When I opened my internet account at PCI, I first had to deposit a avarage daily balance of 10000 Pesos or its US-Dollar equivalent. OK, this is quite a lot of money which you will not be able to use as long as you keep that account open. Then I had asked for the possibility to transfer money to any of the PCI accounts without the requirements to register them first. This was confirmed but does not work like this. You still have to register the target accounts. This might cause a problem as these target accounts have to be registered personnally at the branch which is handling your account.

By the way, to open up such an internet account with PCI you have to appear in person at your PCI branch. So better plan for your next trip to the Philippines a visit to some PCI branch which is close to the places you typically will stay for most of the time.

In case of problems or questions you will have to communicate via fax or email with your account manager. My experience here was very positive. Emails are answered within one day, and required actions are performed with the same speed. The transfer worked typically within one bank working day, i.e. it was available the very next day on the target account. Now I am able to handle my money myself and distribute as needed and as decided by me.

Banking and Financial Links:
PCIB (Philippine Commercial Equitable Bank)
Peso-Express (Transfer via Credit Card)
PNB (Philippine National Bank)
Landbank (Landbank of the Philippines)
PhilBank (Philippine Banking Corporation)
BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands) (merging with FEBTC)
MetroBank (Metropolitan Bank and Trust Company)
Urban (Urban Bank)
FEBTC (Far East Bank and Trust Company) (Merging with BPI)
ADB (Asian Development Bank)
IBANK (International Exchange Bank)
Coconut (United Coconut Bank)
Citybank (Citybank of the Philippines)
Union (Union Bank of the Philippines)

Address of the PCI Padala Office in Germany:
PCI Express Padala GmbH
Ulmenstr. 22
60325 Frankfurt am Main
Tel: 069/720070
Fax: 069/172228
Email: PCIEP.FFM@t-online.de