Author: Reekay V.
Since 2012 I’ve been traveling through various islands of the Philippines as a full-time Expat and spent 1999 living in Vietnam.
Share with me my ongoing adventures of life in the Philippines. Hopefully you find my observations helpful in your own adventures.
— Reekay
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As someone who also lives in the Philippines in theory I agree with all that you have said. My only issues which I have personally experienced is that Globe post paid was almost impossible for me to cancel. It took many months which I also had to pay for so it would not stay on my record. I canceled due to the fact I was being overcharged. In all sincerity please keep up the informative videos. I just wanted to add in my personal experience
You provided the most direct way of achieving a Philippine debit card of anyone I’ve heard. I’ve heard a lot of crazy but never something so straightforward.
omg.. this is crazy to get into all of this. I just use my atm card. very simple. But I love your videos. they are always very interesting. I had dhl send me a card over night from usa. was very simple.
Thanks for the info Reekay, have you tried Gotyme?
Can you pay your rent with the G cash?
Can you pull cash from the ATM with the G cash debit card?
I use Remitly for money transfers from my Canadian bank accounts to GCash for various purposes. It is really easy and fast. I still use ONE of my cards in a bank ATM at times just for some quick cash. I will look into changing to postpaid, though, and getting a CGash card…
You’re definitely the best Phils Vlogger around. Always sensible and wise advice. You have covered so many great topics for expats I would recommend you write a book. You would have no issue getting other Vloggers to interview you to promote your book.
Can you use the gcash card at the atm if you must withdraw cash?
Also if someone steals your sim or phone can they access your gcash?
Golden information!
-Nils
FYI to everyone. Wise is cheaper than Remitly for me by about 1%. So it saves me $30 on every $3k sent to GCash vs. Remitly. You can do everything he recommended except substitute Wise for Remitly.
Wise is also faster than Remitly. Remitly says 3-6 business days whereas for Wise my money is in GCash in ~12-24 hours as long as it is a weekday. However, if you send it on a Friday then it won’t be there until Monday.
Remitly and Western Union banned me for using their services too much, for multiple people. What’s next?
I also pay for flights within the Philippines with my Gcash account, it is very convenient, thanks for sharing
Much appreciated.
I know that you are pretty Tech savvy but I just wanted to ask a question. Two years ago when I first got here to the Philippines I was starting to download the GCASH app. A windows popped up stating that it needed access to ALL of the files on my phone. I didn’t want a Filipino app having access to ALL the files on my phone. I have other sensitive files on my phone that GCash doesn’t need access to. Do you feel that it’s safe? Obviously you do.
Great video!
For those of us who have Canadian bank accounts, you can transfer money within 20 min from Canada to Philippines using 3 different services inexpensively and at mid-market fex rates.
You’ll need to be able to send Interac transfers to an email address you own, so two email addresses are needed – one for your Canadian bank, and one for Wise. Setup a Wise CAD/PHP account. Setup a Maya account. No need for an ACR card or anything, just your Canadian passport for identification.
Now Interac e-transfer CAD funds to your Wise CAD account. Convert to PHP. Then send those PHP funds to your Maya bank account to pay your water, electricity bill, groceries etc.
Takes less than 20 min. Fastest and least expensive way to move money here.
Get a Wise and a Maya debit card, and be able to withdraw cash from the ATM here in Philippines.
Keep the least amount of money in both Maya and Wise, just in case they decide one day to withhold your funds!
Can you use GCash debit card at the ATM?
I was unable to open a Remitly account because I have no US phone number or address. If you’re in that situation, this solution probably won’t work for you. We still use Remitly with GCash for small amounts of money for paying utility bills but we transfer money to our daughter-in-law that lives in the US and she then sends the money to my wife’s GCash.
Sounds like a 5th life hack for easy retirement.
I recommend always having a back- up for situations where your preferred network is unavailable for one reason or another.
I have had great results for an alternative to Remitly with WorldRemit. Not promoting, simply suggesting to be prepared with options.
Excellent
so g cash works like cash app here in the states then?
Outstanding video Thank you.
Can you use another company besides Remitly? They cancelled my account a long time ago because some woman was trying to scam me and I cancelled the transaction so they punished ME for cancelling the transaction and after years of trying to get them to reinstate my account they basically won’t do business with ME anymore because someone was trying to scam ME. :
Smart move to limit the funds you add to gcash. All sites are eventually hacked, at least a bank has FDIC insurance.
This is THE best explanation I’ve seen so far!! Thx man.
But for apps like Remitly to work, you need a US-based cell phone number/account.
Reekay, this is really helpful ! Thank you
Great info! Thanks.
Simply Genius! Thanks Reekay! As Always, May God Bless you and yours!
Been watching you since you first started on Youtube on Mactan Island! You really made things easy when I visited my first time. Looks like you’re still going strong and I’m still learning from you! One question, When you log into Remitly they want to send you a text to verify its you. How do you handle that? Thumbs up!!!
If some of the expats ever saw a sign at the small Sari-Sari store or 7-11 that say G-cash “cash-in and cash-out” what it mean is that you can get cash from that store by getting the store’s cell number and then you send the amount from your phone to the store and get instant cash from them for a minimal fee. Or if you’re low on funds in your G-cash app and you have the money on you, Then you can give cash to the store and they will send that amount to your G-cash app.
Can you, do you, pay your rent with GCash?
Can you access cash with GCash?
Do you carry/use any cash?
Do you have a backup if GCash is down?
Would you trust Gcash enough to put enough money on it to purchase a scooter if you only intended to keep it there for that transaction?
This is very detailed and usable info for daily financial transactions.
So this means you would need to worry a lot less about getting cash correct?
This is a serviceable workaround, but I notice that Remitly says 3-6 days for delivery of funds when the payment method is a bank account, so maybe best not to count on getting the money in 20 seconds.
Good content. I didn’t know about the SIM card replacement possibility if your phone is stolen & you need to get everything back up & working. That sounds like a good reason to stick with a post-paid SIM card solution so one can keep the Philippines cell number they had.
I assume you have 2 cell phones with one for your bank account 2FA stuff where an actual cell phone number from your home country is required. I’m not sure what I’d do if that cell phone got stolen & I lose access to 2FA for my bank account access for money transfers. I know some banks won’t allow wifi phone numbers like MagicJack, Skype or GoogleVoice for this purpose.
Great information
Thank you for another simple explanation for me and others. If there’s one thing in this process that confuses me, it’s the money and different apps that all you vloggers use. Wise, remitly, gcash, Charles Schwab, etc. it’s been a bit of paralysis by analysis with this. This is clear and easy to follow. Peace ☮️
I stumbled across an interesting way to fund GCash by bypassing Remitly, et al. back in 2023. The Pomelo Card, a US-based Mastercard, offers zero transfer fees, zero cash advance fees, zero credit card surcharges, and zero APR. You charge the GCash to the Pomelo Card and pay it off in full, with Pomelo profiting from the exchange rate, which is the lowest overall cost I’ve seen. This method is also suitable for sponsorships. You can link your own or another GCash account in the Philippines to your Pomelo Card, set a spending limit, and the card charges automatically when you or they make a Gcash transaction, with no transfer fees when you pay it off monthly. I understand that you can also dis-associate the Philippines GCash account if need be.
Does the UK have a similar Global/GCash system? (Obviously it would be called something else.)
if u have like 500$ in the gcash and want the money in your hand, where do u go?
Very helpful thanks!
Can I use Wise to pay into GCash?
As he implied, don’t put more money in Gcash than you can stand to lose in case of “issues” with the Gcash company.
From wikipedia article on Gcash-
“Since GCash does not have bank status, the ₱500,000 protection of funds deposited in a bank by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation is not available for e-money issuers.”
Thanks, Sir Rekay.
Good info. Beware..there are many Push Notification hacks to GCash. Never access via a Notification. Only thru App.
Clearest explanation of GCash I’ve heard to date Thanks for this.
I found this video very interesting and important to know. can you pay your rent with this card. thank you for enlightening me to this video. I saved this video for future reference.
Two questions, is it safe to put large amounts of of money into a gcash acct., the Globe store in ICM mall is no longer, where on Bohol is there another store? Thanks
Very helpful. Makes so much sense. Thanks for sharing this tip.
You absolutely can transfer the number on a lost or stolen prepaid.. ive done it by going in the store. However, some services do block prepaid numbers