How To Send Money to GrabPay in the Philippines: The Best and Cheapest Ways

GrabPay is an influential digital application that is helping to transition the Philippines to a more cashless society. With your mobile phone, you can conveniently send money to friends, shop online, and access loans.

If you live abroad and want to remit foreign currency back to a GrabPay account in the Philippines, you will need to use a third-party money transfer specialist. Some services charge high fixed fees and poor exchange rates, such as traditional banks.

To save money on your next transfer, have a look at our comparison below to find other services that offer better rates when sending money to the Philippines using GrabPay.

Option 1 — Digital Platforms

A digital money transfer service is the best way to send money to GrabPay. GrabPay accepts transfers from two excellent money transfer platforms, Remitly and Skrill. Unlike banks and online payment systems like PayPal, money transfer specialists offer low fixed fees and transparent exchange rates for remittances to the Philippines.

Available Countries

However, Remitly is only available on GrabPay for remittances from the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Netherlands. You can send money to GrabPay with Skrill from Europe, the USA, and Australia.

If you are sending money from countries not listed above, then we recommend you run a search with Monito's comparison engine to find a money transfer service for a cheap bank transfer remittance to the Philippines.

To get started, sign up for Remitly or Skrill (the process usually is quick, easy, and free) and choose GrabPay as your delivery destination. Enter your recipient's mobile number and name as registered under GrabPay and confirm your transfer. The delivery is usually instantaneous!

We go through each option in more detail below:

Remitly

Remitly is a US-based remittance platform that has been the cheapest money transfer service to the Philippines on Monito's comparison engine from August 2021 to August 2022. It supports transfers to GrabPay in the Philippines from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Netherlands.

Average cost to the Philippines: -1%*

Available send countries: the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, Italy and the Netherlands

Unavailable major send countries: Japan, Germany, India, UAE, Malaysia, Turkey

GrabPay limits: USD 2,999 within 24 hours, USD 10,000 within 30 days, and USD 18,000 within 180 days

More info: See our full Remitly review or visit their website.

* Includes a promotional exchange rate for first-time users.

Skrill

Unlike Remitly, Skrill is a mobile wallet that allows many features, including international money transfers. Between August 2021 to August 2022, Skrill averaged as the fourth cheapest money transfer service on Monito's comparison engine. It provides a flexible and easy way to send money to GrabPay from overseas.

Average cost to the Philippines: -1.2%

Available send countries: Europe, the USA, and Australia

Unavailable major send countries: Japan, India, UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey

GrabPay limits: P100,000

More info: See our full Skrill review or visit their website.

Option 2 — Legacy Platforms

In addition to the savvy online options we discussed above, GrabPay also accepts remittances from traditional players, Western Union and MoneyGram. Although legacy platforms are usually more expensive than online platforms, they are accepted worldwide by GrabPay.

If you live in a country where Remitly or Skrill is unavailable for GrabPay, legacy platforms may still offer decent exchange rates, such as USD-PHP exchange rates. We recommend you compare money transfer providers before your next transfer to the Philippines so you can check if Western Union and MoneyGram are giving you a good deal.

Let's go over the leading platforms in this category:

Western Union

Western Union is the largest and oldest money transfer operator on the globe, offering money transfers to the Philippines from dozens of countries across the globe.

Average cost to the Philippines: Approx. -1.2%

Available major send countries: All

Unavailable major send countries: None

GrabPay limits: USD 1,500 per day

More info: See our full Western Union review or visit their website.

MoneyGram

After Western Union, MoneyGram is the second-largest money transfer operator in the world and also offers money transfers to the Philippines using GrabPay from a large number of countries worldwide.

Average cost to the Philippines: Approx. -0.9% + $5 fee

Available major send countries: All

Unavailable major send countries: None

GrabPay limits: $10,000 every 30 days

More info: See our full MoneyGram review or visit their website.

Option 3 — Banks

If you live overseas but have a bank account in the Philippines (or if you want to remit money to friends and family back home), then you can remit money to a bank account first. Then, domestically transfer that to a GrabPay account.

However, we do not recommend you make an international bank transfer from a foreign bank to a bank in the Philippines. Sending money overseas with a traditional bank is very expensive, amounting to over 5% of the total transaction amount in many cases.

Instead, we highly encourage you to choose a money transfer specialist like Remitly to cheaply send money to a Philippine bank account. WorldRemit ranked as the second best service to the Philippines from August 2021 to August 2022 while Wise ranked as third.

Since rates change all the time, compare services in real-time with Monito to find the best international money transfer specialist for remittances to the Philippines: