The Philippines is notoriously known for its expensive and inefficient banking systems and services. The financial services offered by the nation’s leading banks and financial institutions are extremely difficult to obtain, especially for average employees or workers with mediocre salaries.
Over time, Filipino workers migrated to local remittance networks, most notably the Lhuiller remittance network, to transfer money around the country. The majority of workers in the capital city Manila and other major cities including Cebu support their families located in the provinces, that have limited access to banks and other financial services. With hundreds remittance outlets and branches located in each city, Filipino employees began to prefer local remittance outlets over banking systems.
This migration restructured the monetary system and the financial industry of the Philippines completely. Billions of dollars are processed by these independent remittance networks annually, and workers are using these non-bank alternatives as their solution to transfer money.
However, the issue with these remittance outlets always has been its cost. To send small amounts, workers pay nearly 7% of the payment as transaction fees. For larger payments, the transaction fee is even higher. More importantly, the receiving party, which most often is the family of the worker located in the province, had to spend a substantial amount of money from the actual payment to travel to the remittance outlets usually located in the hub of the city.
With bank’s inefficient services and remittance outlet’s expensive fees, Filipino workers began to search for other alternative payment networks to send money across the country. As this interest widely spread throughout the country, Bitcoin became extremely popular amongst workers, employees, and average users.
Major cryptocurrency companies in the Philippines target this remittance problem by offering easy and simple methods of purchasing and selling bitcoin. For instance, if an employee has to send money from Manila, through platforms and applications offered by cryptocurrency companies in the Philippines, money can be deposited to bank ATMs, bank outlets, and even convenience stores for families to claim.
Coins.ph
Coins.ph is the most popular crypto company and bitcoin platform in the Philippines. With its close ties with the local payment network providers and banks, it allows users to to purchase and sell bitcoin through traditional methods such as bank deposits, bank wiring, and ATM deposits.
Over the past two years, Coins.ph has significant improved its platform, adding new services and features which allow anyone to purchase or sell bitcoin through convenience stores, remittance outlets, and even local brokers.
The most interesting part of the Coins.ph platform is its services that enable users to settle utility bills. On the Coins.ph platform, users can settle credit card, electricity, water, and rental fees using bitcoin. Normally, users would have to visit each company to pay in cash.
Rebit.ph
Rebit.ph, one of the main companies under Satoshi Citadel Industries, is a unique remittance platform based on bitcoin that allows anyone in the Philippines and around the world to send money from/to the Philippines through bitcoin.
With zero service fee policy, Rebit has quickly grown to become a major player in the international remittance market, allowing users to initiate in transparent international transactions without hidden fees and by offering real-time BTC-PHP exchange rates.
Rebitters, or users of Rebit.ph, can also cash out their bitcoin in major banks and local pawnshop networks, which are located in any city in the country.
Bitmarket.ph
Bitmarket.ph is a merchant payment processing platform that allows both online and offline merchants to accept bitcoin. The platform enables real time transactions with no costs, accepting bitcoin and peso through a secure and reliable platform.
The Bitmarket.ph team also operates under Satoshi Citadel Industries, which houses some of the most popular and well known crypto companies in the Philippines.
Coins.ph, Rebit.ph, and Bitmarket.ph have led the financial revolution and restructuring of the financial induistry in the Philippines over the past two years. With their services and increasing interest from filipino workers, the bitcoin ecosystem will continue to improve throughout the country.
Feature Image: Manila Office Business Philippines Credit from Pixabay
