Sending Money

[gloryforixseal]

Every so often I have to send my daughters money.. for airfares or in the latest situation, to pay for visas and medicals etc., I never have a problem with wiring the money to their accounts from my bank account and the charge is 20. As far as ikobo goes... my daughters friend has an account with them. He sent me the ikobo card with his pin and has sent amounts of 500 at a time.. about 3 times over a couple of years. I withdraw the entire amount from an ATM. This is for purchases..he shops online but in most cases his SA credit card is not accepted so we pay from this side. I think this company operates offshore or some such thing. I can try and find out more for you if you like. I think it is safe enough in you are not sending large amounts. It has worked well with him sending money from SA to here. Not sure how it will work doing it the other way around. I am sure it wouldnt be a problem.

[tom_shor]

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.

I have a Wells Fargo Account but it is not a regular bank account it is a remittance account. I pay a fee when I make a deposit and there is no fee for withdrawal as long as they use an ATM that is in the Approved Network. They offer pretty close to the official rate. I think they have a different type of account now that deposits money directly into an account in the Philippines. Once again this is a remittance account not a regular account so no ATM fees.

[Art2ro]

Great post and info Jim ...... as another alternative and for those only sending money once or twice https://www.remithom.../common/home.dohttps://www.xoom.com...iveCountryCode=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 .....

The two remittance on-line vehicles you mentioned are pretty good, especially xoom.com which is pretty versatile, safe and reputable. I think giving someone an ATM card sometimes breeds problems, the card can be swallowed my the machine and it's not in their names, service fees and or withdrawals exceeded! Anyway, each to their own! Different strokes for different folks! Edited February 8, 2010 by Art & Jho

[tropicalwaste]

I went the other way round I created a few businesses and dont have to remit anything when im in the UK. Not the best alternative if your having problems even trusting some people with ATM cards or any funds.. If things got like that I would be gone I wont play those games as simply im not the "stupid foreigner" which is what I say in my head when people do try to stiff me for something. Its the fact of being awkward and being able to pull the plug which keeps things under your control.. If they manage to lose the ATM etc. thats their problem should take better care as no doubt the ATM will be lost and the money gone yet the pin code wasnt with the card??If you cant trust the people around you then just dont get involved.

[Len_and_Edie]

We have been satisfied with Philippines National Bank PNBRCI Web Remit. It took a while to set up an account but actually it made me feel a little better that they were being thorough in their verification process. We do transfers from our bank here in Kansas to my wife's sisters PNB account in Isabella province. Takes less than a week and costs about $7 for a $500 transfer. We were paying a $25 service charge when we had our bank set up the transfer.

[love2winalot]

Hiya: I just showed this idea to my wife. We currently have her brothers open a $ acct, at their banks in PI. Then we use rcmc, or PNB, or a remitence service here in Las Vegas, and they deposit the money into their $ acct. They then of course have to go to the bank to get it out, and use a money changer for the $ to peso conversion.So, she ask's, Does not the ATM Machine going to convert $ to Peso at a lower rate than a money changer? And, if the money being changed is a lot, and there is a difference in the exchange rate, does it not end up costing more money to do it this way, via sending them a debit card? Thanks. Hugh

[TheMason]

I use RemitHome when I need to transfer money to either myself or a relative. It only costs $8 per transaction if you set it up as a recurring transaction. I do get dinged about 75 centavos on the exchange rate, but you can only send up to $1000 per transaction so you're really not talking about a lot of cash.The other benefit is that RemitHome offers door-to-door delivery in the Metro Manila area at no extra charge. No trips to the bank or anything like that. The courier just shows up with the money. I prefer this method because there is no worry about someone losing the ATM card or creating service fees for me. My wife's family are not financially savvy. They have never really had bank accounts or ATM cards. Rather than teach them how to handle a bank account, I'd rather just give them the cash and be done with it.When sending money to myself, I have pesos deposited directly into my BDO account via RemitHome. I looked at doing wire transfers instead, but I'm with Bank of America and they charge $45 for USD transfers and $35 for peso transfers. If you send pesos, they get you on the exchange rate worse than RemitHome does.Fortunately, I've had several friends and family come to visit over the past year or so and I always ask them to bring dollars to me so I haven't had to send money to myself for over a year.

[Braddo]

I have opened an account in my name last year in Australia to do exactly that when we were building our house things went well untill the ATM swallowed our card and our Mum could not get it back.So we opened an account in her name in the RP and we can send up to $10.000 for a charge of $12 or we can send money to her via Similer to Remit home for a $8 charge and she can collect straight away after we depositThe exchange rate is only 10 peso different that what is advertised.Cheers