Send money from Japan to Philippines

In DCOM's list by country, the ways to receive in the Philippines are bank account transfer, e-wallet and cash pickup, and the currencies are Philippine pesos and US dollars. SBI Remit describes cash pickup through the MoneyGram location network (US dollars or pesos), deposit to accounts at 60 banks in the Philippines (pesos), and deposit to an e-wallet, and it names GCash as the wallet. Wise says it can send to bank accounts and to 8 wallets such as GCash, Maya and GrabPay.

Even within the remittance company's limit, the money cannot be credited if the receiving wallet has a limit. Wise states that the wallet operator may set its own limits, and that if a transfer to a wallet is refused you should check with the operator.

GCash says that the accounts that can receive remittances from overseas are those that have completed identity verification (Fully Verified), and it also asks the sender to send with the name exactly as registered in GCash. Under the GCash account limits from October 1, 2026, the amount a Fully Verified account can receive in 1 month is PHP 500,000, and it resets on the 1st of the next month. Before you send, check whether the recipient has completed identity verification.

SBI Remit says the recipient needs to be registered with the wallet in advance, and that a transfer to a wallet cannot be cancelled. Instarem also states that a transfer to an e-wallet cannot be cancelled after it is sent.

Wise says that after the payment has come in and the conversion is done, up to PHP 50,000 arrives right away, and above that it normally takes 1–2 business days to reach the bank account. Smiles explains that up to PHP 50,000 is credited almost right away if the receiving bank is a member of InstaPay, and that over PHP 50,000 and past the cut-off time it goes by PesoNet on the next business day. A transfer refused on InstaPay is switched to PesoNet and may take 1–2 business days.

SBI Remit gives its guidance by groups of banks. For some banks it is within 15 minutes in principle, and for banks in another group, over PHP 50,000 it is on the next business day or later. Cash pickup at MoneyGram takes about 10 minutes, but it may take from several hours to about 2 days depending on the way of sending and the location's opening hours.

Smiles tells recipients to bring the reference number, the exact amount, the sender's name and a government-issued ID when they pick up cash. In a 2024 memorandum (M-2024-006), the Philippine central bank (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, BSP) asks the financial institutions it supervises to widely accept the national ID (PhilID, including the digital ePhilID) as a valid identity document for all financial transactions.

When you send from a Japanese bank, there are also rules for the input fields. Rakuten Bank says that for a transfer in pesos, the POP code that shows the purpose of the transfer has to be entered in the "message to recipient" (受取人へのメッセージ) field. MUFG Bank states that for a transfer in pesos, it cannot handle a recall (組戻し) even if you ask after sending.