11 December 2015

Remittances from SG to PH: DBS vs i-Remit

Hi fellow SG-OFWs. Have you noticed that the online DBS remit to Philippines (https://www.dbs.com.sg/personal/promotion/php-remit) has S$0 transfer fee when you remit to home, or is it just a Christmas promo?

Even if it's just a holiday promo, using DBS is now better than, for example, i-Remit. The forex in DBS is recently comparative to Philippine ones (S$1 SGD = 33.35 PHP in DBS vs =33.41 PHP in i-Remit). Additionally, Philippine remit services have about S$4.00 service fee per transaction, which would end up DBS to be cheaper. Not to mention that DBS transfer can be done online, while Philippine remittance needs to be a personal transaction with online appointment (https://ibilis.iremit-inc.com/), which would mean going through long lines in Lucky Plaza.

So, at least until the holidays are over, using DBS is way more convenient and sometimes cheaper than using Philippine-based services. Do you agree? How about other banks e.g. OCBC and SingPOST?