Sending Money To the Philippines With Remitly: Monito's Review

Long one of cheapest ways to send money to the Philippines from abroad, Remitly has recently established itself as the cheapest money transfer service of all on average for transfers to the Philippines, according to our analysis of tens of thousands of searches on Monito's comparison engine over the past six months.

Take a look at our in-depth guide below to find out what Remitly charges on remittances to the Philippines, how often it's the cheapest, what payment and receiving options you have, as well as its best alternatives:

By and large, the Seattle-based money transfer service Remitly is an excellent option for sending money from most countries across the globe to the Philippines, offering some of the most competitive transfer options for cash pickup, bank transfers, and mobile payments available anywhere on the market.

Through its partnership with local banks such as BDO, Metrobank, and BPI, as well as with a vast range of other services such as SM Supermalls, GCash, and Coins.ph, Remitly today offers many pay-out options, very low exchange rates from most major currencies to the Philippe peso, and no transfer fees — all firmly establishing the service at the top (or close to the top) of our ranking tables as a result.

NB: This article delves into transfers to the Philippines with Remitly. If you'd like to learn more about Remitly more broadly, we recommend that you check out our in-depth Remitly review. If you'd simply like to find out which service is currently the cheapest for transfers to the Philippines, then try running a search on our comparison engine.

So, What Do Remitly Transfers To The Philippines Cost?

When it comes to sending money abroad, you can expect to pay one (or both) of two main types of fees. The first is a service fee, which will come in the form of a fixed fee or a commission, levied on each transfer that you send abroad.

The second fee is made up of the difference between the "real" exchange rate (known as the mid-market exchange rate) and the exchange rate that the service chooses to charge. This difference is known as the exchange rate margin.

When it comes to transfers with Remitly more specifically, you will only be paying exchange rate margin fees when sending abroad. This means that you'll pay no extra fees, with Remitly only receiving a tiny share of the transfer by offering you a slightly less favourable exchange rate compared to the mid-market rate.

Bear in mind that charging an exchange rate margin is a common practice among money transfer providers. In fact, Remitly's exchange rate margins (which are roughly around 0.3% of the total transfer amount) are considerably cheaper than those charged by banks. For transfers from the United States to the Philippines using BDO Unibank, for example, these exchange rate margins are double Remitly's, sitting at around 0.8% of the total transfer amount, with BDO still charging additional service fees that Remitly does not.

So, what will Remitly charge on a medium-sized transfer to the Philippines? Take a look at cost breakdown for several major currencies below:

How To Send Money To the Philippines With Remitly

Sending money to the Philippines with Remitly is a straightforward process.

To do so, you'll first need to create an account and specify to which country you'd like to send your money. From then, your transfer will be a matter of several simple steps clearly laid out to you on Remitly's website.

What Pay-Out Options Does Remitly Offer?

When it comes to paying for your transfer, in most countries you'll have the option of sending a local bank transfer (as opposed to an international wire transfer which is much more expensive as it goes over the SWIFT network and can incur costly correspondent bank fees in the process), as well as making the payment using a debit card or a credit card.

On your recipient's side, they'll have several options available to them for receiving their money as pesos in the Philippines. These include bank deposits (i.e. the receipt of the bank transfer mentioned above), cash pickup, mobile wallet payments, and even cash delivery.

The sender of the transfer should take care to specify which of the above methods they'd like the money to be collected.

Which Pay-Out Partners Does Remitly Work With?

In our opinion, the scope of Remitly's service for money transfers to the Philippines is quite impressive. According to the company, this is achieved through a number of key partnerships with some of the leading banking, retail, and financial groups and associations across the Philippines. For example, Remitly is partnered with the following major Filipino banks:

• BDO Unibank
• Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI)
• Philippine National Bank (PNB)
• Metrobank

Remitly has also partnered with a large number of lesser-known banking associations, pawnshops, cash retailers, rural and development banks, and payment services across the Philippines to allow for greater access to their services. A few of these include:

• PayMaya
• GCash
• Coins.ph
• SM Supermalls
• Zambank
• Villarica Pawnshop

All in all, Remitly's partnerships in the Philippines allow for the company to offer a wider scope of service to Filipinos, as well as shorter transfer times and, perhaps most notably of all, significantly cheaper transfer costs.

Is Remitly Right For You?

All things considered, if you're planning to send money to the Philippines from abroad then Remitly is a service that is worthy of your attention. From offering very low exchange rates and no transfer fees to an impressive scope of service and pay-out options, Remitly will very likely meet your needs for remittances to the Philippines.

However, our word of caution would be that what appear to be attractive fees and exchange rates can change very quickly and without notice.

In the last several months, for example, Remitly has gone from among the cheapest services on average for remittances to the Philippines to the best on average across most searches on our comparison engine. While this is certainly a promising and competitive development, we'd nonetheless caution our users that Remitly may not always be the best choice for your transfer to the Philippines.

For example, between 29 September 2020 and 29 December 2020, Remitly was the cheapest provider on nearly 45% of all searches to the Philippines on Monito's comparison engine from across the globe. Meanwhile, three other services, namely Skrill, WorldRemit, and TransferWise, together constituted the cheapest providers on a further 45% of searches over that same period. On any given search, any of these providers (or even another one entirely) might end up being the cheapest!

As a result, if you're looking for the cheapest provider on average, then we'd recommend that you sign up with Remitly. Skrill, WorldRemit, and TransferWise are also worth signing up with too, as their transfers to the Philippines are comparatively very cheap:

On the other hand, if you're looking to find the cheapest service on every transfer to the Philippines, then we'd recommend that find real-time and up-to-date data on our comparison engine:

Photo by Ramon Kagie on Unsplash