Re: Wise
 

Yup! As I understand it, transfers up to 50K pesos go via instapay, above this they go via BSP for "checking" , supposedly anti money laundering etc. It changed when Wise set up Wise Philippines last year and BSP added VAT onto transfer fee..
I transferred my pension last Friday morning and it was in my BPI account mid afternoon. If I had sent it later in the day I would not have seen it until Monday..

Hope this is of interest..................

Re: Wise
 

Yes, thanks it is.
Having a 50k limit to tie in with Instapay here makes sense.
Yes, you shouldn't leave it too late on Fridays otherwise you get a weekend delay.
Just a thought, but in case there was an emergency of some sort and you wanted 70k quickly could you get away with sending two remittances a few hours apart, say 30k and 40k?

Re: Wise
 

I've no idea! I would think that doing it in the week would be no problem but at the weekend? Probably get caught in the system till monday!

Re: Wise
 

The 50k limit on remittances explains why my DWP pensions are now reaching my BDO account a day later than was the norm until a few months ago. Very interesting that anything greater than 50k (why so low?) is regarded as money laundering potential.

Re: Wise
 

They did up the Bank Sentral maximum insured deposit limit per depositor to P1M last year. So they do review limits.

This doesn't involve Wise but it does Instapay so I will mention it here.
Currently dealing with a lost transfer of a good sized sum under P50k between two banks here using Instapay.
The intended receiving bank has spent two days looking for it to no avail. I've told them I will be going to the sending bank branch about it on Monday if they dont get it by then.
Looking it up seems you only contact Instapay yourself if the "participating institutions dont solve the problem.
Will update here later.

Re: Wise
 

Update:
My funds made it to my account after 8 days.The sending bank arranged them to be freed from Instapay. Of course, they gave me no reason for the long delay. It usually takes seconds..First time I've had such a problem. A few times with using Gcash. In those cases many other people were affected.
Probably nothing one can do to avoid it. I suppose just be aware it can happen. Good it wasn't a situation where I needed the money quickly!
Instapay is run by the Banko Sentral. In the first instance only your sending bank can deal with them.

Re: Wise
 

This doesn't just pertain to Wise, but I suspect others as well.

I am with Lloyds Bank and transfer funds on a regular basis to my BPI account here and have been doing so for many a year.

Normally the amount is 10k php as an when needed.

A few days ago, my Wise transfer of 10k was refused by Lloyds and thinking it was a glitch, transferred the said amount instead to my recently opened account.... again at BPI. No problem.

Today, I tried to transfer 10k to my old BPI account again and it was successful..... but then I got an email from Wise not long after, that Lloyds refused the transfer.

I then transferred the 10k to my recently opened BPI account with no problems.

Obviously I intend to query this with Lloyds tomorrow (Monday) and find out what is going on.

My point is that if Lloyds had decided that there was a potential problem with these regular small transfers over the years, they should have informed me. Not just refuse without prior explanation.

For me, it didn't create a problem. But for others it could have resulted in financial hardship.

Re: Wise
 

When things go wrong it is more likely the UK bank is at fault rather than Wise. A while ago Virgin Money wrote to me saying they are closing all accounts of non UK residents. I still needed a UK type account as my income is from UK. I opened a Wise current account and had my house rental and private pension income paid into that. Virgin blocked every attempt to transfer money into the Wise account. Apparently Croatia is on a blacklist of countries with weak anti money laundering laws which is why these transactions get blocked. I suspect Croatia simply does not get enough money laundering cases to justify tighter laws. After a lot of argument, Virgin agreed to keep my account going as long as I agreed to have my UK state pension paid into it. I don't get that yet but I will be 66 in a few days time.

Re: Wise
 

Thanks for that.

Yes, I agree that it's nothing to do with Wise, they were only carrying out my request which they have done efficiently over the years.

If it's a suspected money laundering issue, then it begs the question why Lloyds would happily allow the transfer to one account in the Philippines... but not the other.

On your other point, Lloyds is only one of a few that permit UK bank accounts for expats.

Regards..

Re: Wise
 

Spoke to Lloyds today and they confirmed that there are no restrictions on my account.

Sent another 10k to my old account via WISE and it went through with no problems.

Hmm....