exiledscots1

HI All,

Im new to Manila and have just been paid (yay!) however I need to move money to the UK to pay bills there. I do not have a dollar account as I am treated as a local and have a peso payroll account (visa application etc still being processed).....is there an easy way to send the money? or do I have to jump through all the annoying hoops at my bank branch? I was looking at using a pre paid visa/mastercard to do it but they seem to have a limit of 100K pesos loading per month (I need to send more.....)...any and all advise appreciated....

Thanks all

multivitamins

Hi Exile.

I think most, if not all, of the banks in the Philippines can send money to banks abroad. Either via wired bank deposit or telegraphic transfer. Make sure you have your benificiary's bank, account number, address, and the swift code or routing number. I think for telegraphic transfer the service fee is USD18 regardless of amount. I suggest go to either of the following big banks: HSBC, BPI, BDO and RCBC.

By the way I am a filipino.

mikemike

suggest that you speak to HSBC about funds transfers. You can convert pesos to dollars and pay those into ur bank account at a reputable money changer BE VERY CAREFUL make sure it is licensed and not going to short change or short rate you. Once you have dollars or any other currency you can freely transfer out of the Philippines without a problem. For changing direct pesos to another currency within the bank requires Banko Sentral clearance unless it is for travel purposes and you have tickets and itinary to support that.

I kept currency chere and just sold pesos for those currencies, banked it and remitted home as and when, no issues.

quiltman

We have a UK sterling account in London with BPIEurope and a peso account with BPI here. It takes seconds online to transfer money from the sterling account to the peso account AND vice versa. It costs 5 pounds from UK to here for any amount up to 25000 sterling but don't know cost other way as always leave some money in our normal UK accounts to pay for UK purchases. Every month we transfer pensions from our UK bank to BPIEurope - takes about 2 hours to appear in BPIEurope and is FREE. Then just transfer between the sterling account and peso account in seconds. Good exchange rate as well. Yesterday it was 71.85peso to the pound.

You can set up different accounts to pay into from either the sterling or peso account so if I wanted, I could register my UK bank account and transfer from the peso account directly to my UK account.

BPIEurope were very helpful and they actually set up our peso accounts from the UK so I could transfer money before we left. We did have to go to a local BPI branch here to collect our ATM cards but that was arranged in advance and took 10 minutes!

I'm sure most other banks here have similar arrangements.
Have a look at www.bpieuropeplc.com or www.bpiexpressonline.com for more info.