ULOG: Goodbye Cebuana. Hello SecurityBank Cardless ATM Withdrawals!

Hello guys! Today I just want to share with you something the I first thought to be fake news but upon further investigation it turns out the be true. It seems that one of my favorite way of Cashing out will not be available next year. Cebuana will not anymore be available for Cash Out starting March 7, 2019 for users of Coins.ph.

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This announcement comes after Coins.ph announced that they are increasing the Cash Out charges when using Cebuana. Honestly I was a bit surprised with the news, I have always thought of Cebuana to be one of the most progressive remittance company in the Philippines and would readily accept emerging technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies as a way of servicing Filipinos as an alternative to the costly cross-border settlements if banks. However for whatever reason they might have opted to terminate their partnership with one of the most successful and popular blockchain/crypto-related firm in the country Coins.ph.

One can hypothesized that it might be a precedent to its own blockchain-based financial services (which I hope it is) but that is just wishful thinking as I have not received any information about that becoming a reality. Maybe if some of you who has information about any attempt of Cebuana to leverage blockchain technology or partner with blockchain-based firm you might want to share it in the comments section.

Like in any perceived threat there is always an opportunity to explore alternatives that can mitigate the impact of such event. In this case we are losing one of the more famous and faster ways of cashing out- Cebuana. In reality Cebuana is just one of the remittance service providers we can use in Coins.ph there is LBC, mlhuillier, Palawan, Tambunting and RD Pawnshop. The only advantage of Cebuana is the speed by which they are able to process transaction as it take only minutes to an hour to consummate transactionswhile other remittance services requires you to send the request before 12 noon and will be process within the day before 6:00 PM. All other transaction requests made after 12 noon will be process the following day in which you can expect the remittance details be send to the receiver any time from 12 noon to 6:00 PM.

As you can see the ability of Coins.ph to send out remittances quickly and the same day have greatly decrease with this announcement. I just hope they will be able to convince other remittance centers to adopt CoinExpress (a platform they use to process transaction rapidly and automatically) so that they will be able to transact faster. Nevertheless that is also wishful thinking as there is no word yet if other remittance centers will be able to integrate with their system.

Hello Security Bank ATM Cardless withdrawal

Fortunately there is another alternative which is a lot cheaper and faster than using Remittance center: Security Bank Cardless ATM withdrawal. To be able to do this the receiver of the money remittance is just required to have a mobile number where the remittance details will be sent and a nearby Security Bank ATM to withdraw the Cash out. If you want to know excatly how it is done you can read the procedure in the Coins.ph support page here. You can also watch a demonstration how it is done in the YouTube video below.

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What I really like about this option is the fact that cashing out using this services is totally free. yes there is no transaction fee required to be able to use this services. However there are some limits when using this service. First, the minimum you can cash out is 500 pesos while not much of an issue to some but for people who are sending less than 500 pesos can not avail of this option. Second. Price cash out are limited only in denominations of 100 pesos. This means that you can only Cash Out 500s 600s 700s and so on. Third and last limitation is the withdrawal limit per transaction is only at 5,000 pesos per transaction. Although this limitation can be easily be bypassed by doing multiple transaction I am not really sure if they will allow it. I have asked the support about this but I have not received any feedback from the support team of Coins.ph.

In a way I was glad that Cebuana made this announcement as it forced me to explore other venues through which I can cash out from my favorite crypto wallet in the Philippines: Coins.ph. That is all for now friends until next time. See you around and Happy Steeming!