Philippines: GCash Says Fraud Costs Keep Its ₱10 Transfer Fee as Banks Go Free
GCash, the Philippines’ biggest e-wallet, says the cost of fighting fraud is the main reason it still charges ₱10 for transfers to banks and other wallets, while several large banks now send them for free. A senior executive at Mynt, the company behind GCash, described lower fees as “a heavy balancing act” against the money it spends on security.
Key facts
- GCash cut its fee for InstaPay transfers to other banks and e-wallets from ₱15 to ₱10 on 4 July 2026. Maya and GrabPay made the same cut.
- The cut followed BSP Circular No. 1238 from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the central bank. It says the gap between fees for transfers inside one provider and transfers to another should reflect only real costs, such as the switch fee.
- Big banks including BPI and RCBC waived their InstaPay fees from early July.
- Mynt’s regulatory and compliance chief, Ceferina Sison, said the remaining fee helps pay for GCash’s fraud management systems.
- Mynt listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange in October in the country’s largest IPO, worth ₱60.9 billion.
Why GCash is keeping a fee
InstaPay is the Philippines’ real-time payment rail for transfers of up to ₱50,000. Each transfer passes through a clearing switch, which charges the sending institution a processing fee. The BSP’s rule doesn’t ban fees. It asks providers to show that any extra charge for sending money elsewhere is backed by a cost analysis.
In an interview with BusinessWorld, Ms Sison argued that a tech company can’t protect users with staff alone. “Technology is not cheap, and technology keeps evolving,” she said, adding that fraudsters are also becoming better organised. In her view, cutting fees affects how the company spreads its spending on security tools, not just its revenue.
The pressure is real. A survey released in October by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), with Mastercard and Gogolook, estimated that Filipinos lost ₱121.8 billion to scams in a year. Respondents said scammers used e-wallets in 73% of cases, up from 34% a year earlier. Bank transfers fell to 12% from 36%. As fraud moves to e-wallets, the cost of stopping it falls more heavily on wallet operators.
Why it matters
For users, the debate is about everyday costs. Many Filipinos, including families who receive money from relatives working overseas, move small amounts between GCash and bank accounts often. A ₱10 fee per transfer adds up when banks are offering the same service for nothing.
For the industry, it shows how fee rules can hit smaller players hardest. Ms Sison warned that any regulation on fees “will affect them even more”, because younger fintechs have smaller ecosystems and fewer ways to earn money elsewhere. She also called for more predictable regulation and a level playing field as foreign players enter the Philippine market.
The wider question for Southeast Asia is who pays for scam protection. Central banks want digital payments to be cheap and widely used. They also want providers to spend more on fraud detection and, in several markets, to take more responsibility when customers are tricked. Those two goals pull fees in opposite directions. GCash’s argument is that security has to be funded somewhere.
What to watch
- Whether the BSP asks e-wallets for the cost analyses behind their remaining InstaPay fees, and whether it accepts fraud spending as a valid cost.
- Whether GCash, now a listed company with public shareholders, cuts the fee further or waives it.
- New scam data, to see whether heavier spending on security slows the shift of fraud towards e-wallets.
Related on FinDeskAsia: Malaysia’s e-wallet war explained and ASEAN’s cross-border QR record.
Sources: BusinessWorld (November 2026); GMA News (July 2026); Daily Tribune (July 2026); Fintech News Philippines (November 2026); NewsBytes.PH (October 2026); Inquirer (October 2026).
