Best way to reduce money-transfer fees in the Philippines

Sending money regularly from one city to another city in the Philippines thru companies such as M Lhuillier, Cebuana Lhuillier, and Western Union usually will cost you at least 10% of the principal amount you are sending. Aside from that, it will take you at an average of 10 minutes to finish the process of filling-out a long form, queuing and then sending the code to the receiver. The main advantage of these companies is that it has a lot of branches nationwide and some of them are open 24 hours.

Smart Padala, a money transfer service of Smart Telecom, is an alternative way to send money and it only charges 1%, the cheapest service fee. However, its branches and authorized outlets are hard to find and not available in most provincial areas. That’s the big disadvantage of it.

Now, here is another way to send money that will save you a lot from service fees especially if you are regularly sending money to a particular person. So, here’s the procedure. Ask the person you are sending money to go to the nearest Banco de Oro (BDO) and open a Cash Card. He/she needs to bring two Valid IDs and 120 pesos to get the Cash Card right away. After that, ask for the Cash Card number and deposit the money (maximum is 10,000 pesos) you are sending to the nearest BDO branch. Now, you can inform the receiver that he/she can withdraw the money, using his/her Cash Card, to nearest ATM at a withdrawal fee of 2 pesos only (BDO ATM). Other ATM will charge 10 pesos. Thus, sending 10,000 pesos thru BDO Cash Card will only cost you 2-10 pesos. Now that’s a lot of savings.

One good thing about BDO Cash Card is that it requires no maintaining balance unlike other ATM savings accounts. =)