EDIT: Intra-country transactions are now unavailable for Xoom. Paypal has added new banks which you can use to verify your Paypal accounts so it is now easier to withdraw them.

As many net savvy Pinays and Pinoys know, Paypal Philippines has finally enabled the receive funds feature of Philippine Paypal accounts. This has led to an incredible ease of transactions with consumers and employers abroad. This has also opened several online opportunities on earning income online especially since many of these companies offer payment through Paypal.

A significant segment of these online earners would be bloggers, who earn either through advertisements, affiliate programs, paid posts and other programs. After applying for personal account, many of these individuals have their funds stuck in their Paypal account because some do not know how they can withdraw it. At the moment, Paypal only allows Visa withdrawals, so the best option for bloggers would be to apply for Unionbank’s Eon card. This is especially useful for those people with new accounts because they can use their Eon cards to enroll in Paypal’s Expanded Use program which verifies their identity and lifts the sending limit which is at $100.

However, for some individuals like me who might already have their own Paypal accounts before and have attached our own non-Visa credit and debit cards (ie.Mastercard) applying for another card might not be an option we want to take at the moment. Since non-US bank accounts are still not accepted by Paypal, one of the options available for us is to use Xoom.com’s Money Transfer services. You must take note that Xoom.com offers a lower exchange rate than that shown in the current Forex rates. The lower exchange rate is, in a way, compensated for by the low fees on the transactions. The table below shows the fees per transaction range:

Joining Xoom.com is easy. After signing up, you’re account is ready to send and transfer funds to anyone you want to send them to here in our country. You can choose to receive either Philippines Pesos or US Dollar. You can also choose different options on how your recipients will receive the transfer. One option would be through bank account deposit, and it supports the following major banks:

Deposit to U.S. dollar accounts:

• Banco de Oro
• Bank of the Philippine Islands
• BPI Family Savings Bank
• Citibank
• Equitable PCI Bank
• HSBC
• HSBC Savings Bank
• MetroBank
• Philippine National Bank
• RCBC
• RCBC Savings Bank
• United Coconut Planters Bank

Deposit to peso accounts:

• Allied Bank
• Asia United Bank
• Asiatrust
• Banco Filipino
• Bank of Commerce
• China Banking Corp.
• Chinatrust
• Citystate Bank Development
• Bank of the Philippines
• East West Bank
• Equitable Savings Bank
• Export Industry Bank
• GE Money Savings Bank
• Insular Bank
• International Exchange Bank
• Land Bank of the Philippines
• LBC Bank
• Manila Bank
• Maybank
• PBCom
• Philippine Business Bank
• Philippine Veterans Bank
• Philtrust Bank
• Planters Bank
• Premiere Bank
• Robinsons Bank
• Security Bank
• Standard Chartered
• UCPB Savings
• Union Bank
• United Overseas Bank

The second option is to have it delivered to your recipients homes. As stated in their website the money will be delivered through Equitable PCI’s Express Padala to the recipient address you provided if you chose the home delivery option. This takes around 2-5 business days, depending on the location.

The third option which I choose when I send money transfers through Xoom.com is the pick-up option. This option is also great if you need the funds asap, since bank deposits and home delivery can take some time before the funds arrive. There are many pick-up locations available, and you can have processed in an hour (if through banks) and a bit more than that if through other options such as Cebuana Lhuillier. The following is the list of available pick-up locations:

Philippine peso transactions may be picked up at:

Equitable PCI (EPCI)

Banco de Oro

BDO Financial (BDO On-site)

SM Forex (Shoemart)

Cebuana Lhuillier

One Network Bank

U.S. Dollar transactions may be picked up at:

Equitable PCI (EPCI)

Banco de Oro

BDO Financial (BDO On-site)

SM Forex (Shoemart)

I also choose the one valid ID plus a secret word option wherein my recipient must supply the secret word I included in the transaction. After filling up all the needed details, your browser will prompt you to choose a payment option, such as Debit card/Credit card or Paypal. Choose Paypal, and then wait as the browser connects to the Paypal site. If you look at the address bar, both Xoom.com and Paypal have https:// which means it is a secure site. According to several definitions,

Https connections do two things: they encrypt your data so that it is nearly impossible to sniff, and they provide an opportunity for your browser to validate that the website is who you think it is.

After the Xoom window in your browser successfully connects to Paypal, you can now log-in and confirm the transaction. Once sent, you will get an online receipt. In your transaction you will be given a transaction number which your recipient needs. It usually starts with X, so your transaction number would look like this: X-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

Your recipients can use this transaction number as a tracking code as well to see if the funds have been sent already and is available for pick-up. They can go to https://www.xoom.com/philippines where the following tracking section is:

Here’s a sample of the transaction history that your recipients will see when they check the progress of the transfer by using the tracking feature:

And that’s it.

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