½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

@danfinn

Maybe I misunderstood you. Apologies.

I know of course about the special deposit account, but after SRRV has been issued, no bank should deny the applicant opening a personal account.

I was merely offering my help if there are many SRRV holders here who are unable to open account.

    @danfinnMaybe I misunderstood you. Apologies.I know of course about the special deposit account, but after SRRV has been issued, no bank should deny the applicant opening a personal account.I was merely offering my help if there are many SRRV holders here who are unable to open account.        -@emvaningen

Many thanks again for your kind offers to help. In the case of Philippine bank accounts I have not been interested in transferring my USA bank deposits to the Philippines. But now I hear from Bob the possibility of opening a Philippine bank account where you just transfer money in from a US bank using wise etc. and then using the Phil banks bill-pay service to pay bills. I may be interested in opening up a Phils account for that purpose and when I do, if I get any SRRV push back I will let you know immediately. For GCASH, I cannot prove 100% they rejected me for not having an ACR card but the fact is, they rejected me and I did not have or submit an ACR card, I had to substitute my SRRV so when asked to take a pic of my ACR card, I took a pic of my SRRV card instead as it was all I had. GCASH does not say that SRRV card is not acceptable, they say nothing about it at all and they rejected my verification when I substituted it for ACR. Or more accurately, they did not reject, they simply failed to approve and never completed my application. Eight times (it became a game almost). It is impossible to talk to anyone there but if I could, chances are the clerk would not even know what a SRRV card was. So my nephew applied on my behalf for a GCASH accoubt and listed me as a Phils resident (true, really), not a foreigner (but I consider myself one lol) and got me verified with my Philippines drivers license. It works fine for now but I prefer Maya who accepted me as a foreigner with SRRV. You might want to ask GCASH why they do not list the SRRV card as an acceptable foreign ID for verification like they accept ACR. They don't even mention SRRV, it's like it doesn't exist. I am not 100% sure that if they investigated further they would be happy with my membership so I don't use them as a primary source, only backup which I have not actually needed.

Is Gcash regulated by BSP?

I can only ask help in case of regulated banks refusing to honor SRRV,

I have GCash, but I forgot how I got it.

    Is Gcash regulated by BSP?
I can only ask help in case of regulated banks refusing to honor SRRV,
I have GCash, but I forgot how I got it.
   

    -@emvaningen

I don't know if they are regulated by BSP and my difficulties in getting verified with them are not a big deal to me anymore because GCASH has good competition. And, GCASH never explicitly said I was rejected due to SRRV. In fact, they never said I was rejected so with that, there is no  specific complaint that can be made. The  questions you could ask are: 1) Do you know what an SRRV ID is? 2) Do you accept the SRRV ID for identifying a foreigner in the verification process? If yes, why do you not list SRRV along with ACR for foreigner ID? If no, why not?

@mrbillone

How about pay Paypal you would like it?

@Moon Dog

A similar thing happened to my Filipina GF last week.  She transferred P9000 to her GCash account in the morning and was going to go to pay her electric later that afternoon with it.  When she went to pay, the money was gone.  I don't have all the details, but she said she spoke with a couple of reps at GCash but they said the money was already withdrawn so there was nothing they could do.  I told her surely they have some systems in place to see what happened as money just doesn't disappear, but then after reading stories in this thread and others it appears that this does happen with GCash a lot (especially with larger amounts).  I told her if it were me to that I'd delete my GCash account and the app off my phone and never use it again.  She mentioned the Maya app, but I know nothing about it, so perhaps that's better (or just using cash or a bank debit account).  She said her sister lost P400 with GCash a couple of weeks ago, too.

@Moon Dog A similar thing happened to my Filipina GF last week. She transferred P9000 to her GCash account in the morning and was going to go to pay her electric later that afternoon with it. When she went to pay, the money was gone. I don't have all the details, but she said she spoke with a couple of reps at GCash but they said the money was already withdrawn so there was nothing they could do. I told her surely they have some systems in place to see what happened as money just doesn't disappear, but then after reading stories in this thread and others it appears that this does happen with GCash a lot (especially with larger amounts). I told her if it were me to that I'd delete my GCash account and the app off my phone and never use it again. She mentioned the Maya app, but I know nothing about it, so perhaps that's better (or just using cash or a bank debit account). She said her sister lost P400 with GCash a couple of weeks ago, too. - @mati_steve

I would also note that you need to be very careful when filling out account numbers on GCASH and MAYA. In my case I typo'd a 9 instead of an 8 in my PLDT bill. After several hours finding out whom to contact at PLDT and getting to a "supervisor", the person finally found my payment with typo and said not to pay in June so I didn't. However. I just looked at the bill on MyPLDT online and it still says I owe. So if that's the case,  I might try once more if I can find the contact information again or, more likely, just pay the damn thing twice as I have no time for the BS.. One typo and the money is gone & hard to get back. Also, when maya first came out, I couldn't get gcash because I'm SRRV and did not possess the required ACR card. But MAYA was happy to verify me with SRRV ID at the time. Now, recently gcash worked with PRA and they now accept the SRRV ID. Rather anticlimactic because, in the meantime, my nephew had gotten me a gcash card based on my driver's license. He may have listed me as a Filipino, not sure. Actually he might think people like me are actual citizens but I rarely use gcash anyway since I had gotten so used to maya. Originally I set up 2 accounts with MAYA. about 2K in each. I cancelled one without first transferring the money to the other account. That was my bad and no way were they going to let me off the hook on that mistake lol. On the plus side I use maya all the time to pay bills online; it is extremely convenient but you just keep the balance low most of the time. As a debit card, maya charged me only 15 pesos for a 7K atm withdrawal instead of the 250php charged to foreign atm cards. There are times when I have had as much as 20k on maya but only for about 5 minutes while paying utility bills from my USA bank through remitly to maya and to the utility. I usually don't leave very much balance because I am totally unconvinced as to the security of maya or gcash.