GCash, a very popular electronic wallet (e-wallet) here in the Philippines, will soon be charging a fee of P5 each time a user cashes in (loading money into his or her GCash account) via the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) or Union Bank of the Philippines, according to a business news story by the Philippine Star. For the newcomers reading this, GCash users can put money into their respective accounts in other ways such as doing it over-the-counter at recognized convenience stores, the cash-in kiosks and other types of businesses that accept GCash cash-in.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the Philippine Star business news report. Some parts in boldface…
E-wallet giant GCash will start charging a convenience fee of P5 for every time a user cashes in from its major partners Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Union Bank of the Philippines in the fourth quarter.
In an interview with reporters, GCash president and CEO Martha Sazon said the convenience fee remains to be one of the lowest compared to the transaction charges imposed by traditional banks that run as high as P25.
“As GCash continues to scale, we still subsidize most of the charges as well as heavily invest on upgrading our infrastructure and reinforcing security services,” Sazon said.
Sazon said GCash has to slap a convenience fee for cashing in to cover its rising costs. However, Sazon said the fee only reduces the subsidies that GCash pays to keep its financial services affordable.
“This also ensures that our operations will remain seamless for all customers. Even with this fee, we will continue to subsidize part of the operating cost for our cash-ins as we remain committed to keeping our services affordable to many Filipinos,” Sazon said.
Sazon is encouraging GCash customers to compute how much they have to spend for every time they load their accounts through BPI and Union Bank.
For instance, Sazon said a user can cash in P10,000 in one go rather than top up P500 in tranches to minimize getting charged P5 every time.
Users can add cash to their GCash platform by linking it into their bank accounts. Likewise, they can cash-in via convenience stores, dedicated machines, department stores, gas stations, sari-sari stores, among others.
Last week, GCash announced that it would waive for the rest of the year the transaction charges on merchants for payments accepted through QR Ph. The e-wallet leader expects that through this, micro, small and medium enterprises will book extra earnings from cashless transactions.
GCash offers merchants access to e-wallet with a limit of up to P500,000 per month, waiving the transaction fee of 1.5 percent for P100,000 in gross sales.
GCash is one of the largest finance apps in the Philippines with a nationwide presence in more than 1,600 billers.
Let me end this piece by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? If you are a GCash user who often loads money using the respective apps or systems of BPI and Union Bank, does the above business story discourage you a lot?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
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