Not long ago, sending P500 to a relative in a remote barangay could cost you almost as much as the amount itself. A tricycle ride to the nearest bank branch ran P100 in far-flung areas. In the city, a taxi or Grab ride just to make a bank transfer cost even more, plus the hours lost to travel and queuing. Then e-wallets and small digital finance companies came along, and that same errand cost P10, took 30 seconds, and needed nothing but a phone.
It's worth asking why that happened. It wasn't one company's generosity. It was competition. Banks, e-wallets and remittance apps grew alongside each other, each racing to make sending money easier and cheaper than the next. That race brought the cost down from P100 to P10 or P20, not any single institution's goodwill. The real lesson is simple: what protects consumers isn't one company's low price. It's how many real choices they have.
Earlier this year, the BSP issued a circular pushing electronic payment fees to be reasonable, transparent and based on actual cost. That's a sound standard, and BSP deserves credit for it. It never required fees to drop to zero. It simply asked that fees reflect what it actually costs to move money safely.
A number of large banks then chose to go further and waive transfer fees entirely. That's their right, and good for their customers in the short term. But it also had a side effect worth noticing. It quietly reset what the public now expects "reasonable" to mean for every provider. Electronic money issuers, the companies behind many e-wallets and remittance apps, are now being asked why they "still charge" for something the biggest banks offer for free.
That comparison misses something important. A bank, at its core, is in the business of keeping your money. It takes deposits, lends that money out and earns enough from interest to give some services away at no charge. An EMI is in the business of moving your money, not keeping it. By law, it cannot lend out the funds passing through it. It has no deposit interest quietly paying its bills. Every transfer it processes comes out of its own pocket.
Think of a jeepney and a private car sharing the same road. Ask both to charge passengers the same fare, and only one survives. That's the risk here too. If every provider has to match the price only the biggest, most diversified players can afford, the smaller ones don't get better. They simply stop competing, or close. A free transaction today can mean fewer companies competing for your business tomorrow, and fewer competitors usually mean less pressure on anyone to keep improving.
This is why a healthy mix of banks, EMIs and other financial players matters to ordinary Filipinos. It is not an industry talking point. It is the mechanism that produced cheaper, better services in the first place. Protecting that mix isn't about protecting any one company. It's about protecting the range of options that got us here and that keeps every provider working to earn your business rather than assume it.
It's also why BSP's approach, careful, consultative and grounded in real data, is the right one. Industry has been engaging with it constructively and openly. Getting this right takes time, and that's exactly as it should be.
One more point is worth making while that process is still underway. If the recent zero-fee move by a few major banks were held up, in a moment as significant as the State of the Nation Address, as a national model for the entire industry, it could send the wrong signal to a public that does not yet fully understand how differently these companies operate or how much those differences have benefited consumers. It could suggest that only one type of provider should remain. That is not a reason to hold back a genuine milestone worth celebrating. It is simply a reason to let the conversation already underway between BSP and the industry run its course.
The next time "zero fee" sounds like a victory, ask a quieter second question: what happens to your choices next year if only the biggest players can afford to offer it? Real value for Filipino consumers was never about one free transaction. It has always been about how many companies are still in the race to serve them.
