Topic: [CLOSED] Mang Sweeney's: send money to the Philippines through bitcoin - page 4. (Read 25335 times)

Hi fcmatt,

You may tell me the particular money transfer service your wife's family prefers to use and I can send payment there.

I recommend, however, that they look for a nearby store with Smart Money service.

http://www1.smart.com.ph/money

This may be one of the most convenient ways for them to receive money. Smart Money is a mobile payment service by Smart Communications, the telecom company with the largest share of subscribers in my country.

A friend tells me her brother can send her money through Smart Money even if she is a subscriber to Globe, which is the other telecom company. She picks up the money from a Smart Money outlet by simply showing the SMS message of the transaction and her ID.

But whatever non-bank money service the family wants to use, I'm pretty sure I can send payment to them. All you need to do is sell me your bitcoins and tell me whom to send my payment to or whatever necessary codes and where your recipient will pick the money up.

[Edited]

~MadSweeney

@fcmatt, you could ask the family to open one of those low maintaining balance accounts? or a reloadable cash card (BDO, BPI), they should only cost about PHP 500.00. You could also use LBC or Cebuanna Lhullier (or Western Union) to have cash sent locally. From you to the here using BTC, then from here to the family, adding of course the cost of the local fee. You save on the international transfer fee. Or you save on the exchange rate difference.

These are the rates for some of them:
http://www.perapadala.com/rates-and-charges.aspx
http://www.lbcexpress.com/PH/Calculator

Understandably, poor families can't open up bank accounts. But if you send often enough, you could also cover the cost of opening an account just for this purpose, then all they need to do is go to the bank every time you send money so long as they do not close the account (or withdraw the minimum maintaining balance.)

my wife and i use western union or something like that. she is filipino.
so often we have to rush around and send her family money. since they
are "poor" asking them to provide a bank account info is prob not going
to work.

so they go pick up cash at a local place in their neighborhood. i think it is
western union. i will have to check.

so unless this can be made pretty darn simple like that i am not sure i can use it.

i have heard of gcash but i am not sure if they use it. they live in quezon city
so having them go any far distance to pick up money is also not an option.

hmmm

Ok. Got it. I just had another idea though. You could keep track of who has how much money (or bitcoin) and refer those amounts you can't handle to someone else, but we all use the same rate you do.

For example, you have up to 20,000 pesos to deposit to someone's account in exchange for bitcoin, I have up to 5000 pesos ready to deposit to someone's bank account.

What happens is we all vouch for each other, sort of a combined trust rating, and we all agree on a common rate (which is based on the market anyway), so any one of us in the group who is able to can do the transaction requested. This way, we aren't really competing and everyone can help in their own little way whether it's 1000 or 20,000. The pool of funds for bank deposits is essentially larger.

If this is too hard to implement, the basic equivalent is I will simply use the same rate you are using and offer my services the same as you (but with a much smaller capital investment, I can't do 20,000 just yet.)

Just like this:
1. Someone sends me BTC.
2. I deposit PHP to their bank account.

I don't have much BTC to do the reverse transaction as I've only got what I've bought from you before. And I've got other hobbies too, so turn around time is at least 1 to 2 days for me.

I see that sarcasm doesn't come across very well on the internet. Otherwise, touche. Please continue ignoring it; it's counter-productive, anyway. You should realize, however, that it doesn't take a genius to come up with this idea and that others can well have thought of it independently even long before you did.

I was reluctant to do this exchange business, and I was hoping somebody else would do this. But when I realized that I would have to wait much longer for someone else to do it, I went ahead and started it. Hell, I might as well make money out of it. There definitely is a need for an exchange where Filipinos can acquire and cash out bitcoins more easily and at less cost. I know I need one. And there must be something useful you can do with this newfangled thing. Remittance is a no-brainer.

I prefer to keep things simple so I can do other things that I'd like to do. If you want to buy or sell bitcoins with pesos, you can do so at Mang Sweeney's.

Oh thanks! In that case, do I get a royalty? hahahaha. Joke only. I'll let you know when I've got more money to invest in this venture so you can add me as part of the exchange group or something like that. Ideally you would like to centralize the transactions so everyone in the group will benefit, but bitcoin by its nature is decentralized and anyone with enough BTC or PHP can be his or her own exchange.

But forming a Cooperative, or a Partnership or some sort of pseudo-Corporation (and not a real one because we will not be making enough money yet and we'd be competing against cash money changers) will enhance the "brand" and "trust".

Just another idea for you to think about. Since you started it already.

Or here's an idea for implementation. People can join this and someone takes notes on how invested each member is. All the money then goes to (or is consolidated to) the "treasurer" who does the transactions when customers want BTC or PHP or whatever service we will offer (I thought of bills payments.) Of course, everyone will have to trust the one person, because potentially, that person could disappear with all the money.

I have yet to think of a simple way to make this work decentralized, but another idea is a server or website or something that does all the computing and just forwards instructions to each member, and the computer decides based on how much each member says he has available, sort of like the other bitcoin exchanges but only for members of the group, not open to the public, otherwise you'd need the infrastructure of a real exchange (like MtGox) and ... ... the banks get involved and it's no fun anymore.

We want to be as low profile as possible so government doesn't get involved. Banks could care less because we are merely using them as they are meant to be used.

Your brilliant idea could not have possibly occurred to me, dear sir, had you not told us. Good job!

Hey...... seems you got the idea to make it work. Just to let everyone else know, I bought BTC from MadSweeney a couple months ago, and posted this idea of a local exchange.

I'd like mobile phone payments to work as well. As soon as I set up SmartMoney, it would be as useful as GCash would have been.

Oh, that's too bad.  That was looking like it could become very useful.

I'm having trouble with GCash, and I have to close this payment option indefinitely. I'll look into its competing mobile wallet, SmartMoney. Hopefully, they will have better service.

[Update: GCash no longer supported.]

I happened to notice that there are GCash Send-out locations in each of the countries listed below:

[removed]



So, ... to transfer money to a GCash mobile wallet, visit a Globe GCash Send-out location (after coordinating with Mang Sweeney):

 - http://gcash.globe.com.ph/remit-paano-maghanap-intl.php  (scroll down and click on your country)

The market price corrected itself sooner than I expected. So I re-adjusted to regular rates, which is now lower than the previously adjusted rates. This is already reflected on my localbitcoins.com ads.

To the sellers, I may have reached the limit of my peso fund for the month, but I may be able to have my buyers pick up your offer. So do go on and make your offer.

I am lowering my rates for the time being, as the market price of bitcoins keep rising. Also, I have hit my monthly limit for my buying side. So unless you're a regular customer, it will be next month when you can sell to me again. But buyers can now buy at discount.

For up-to-date price quotes,

BUY: https://localbitcoins.com/ad/96
SELL: https://localbitcoins.com/ad/95

Another successful transaction with MadSweeney,  i sold him 100 coins.. thanks.

I'm curious about this too. I'll limit my exposure to this by accepting only small offers through this channel.

Good service! I'm doing similar for a couple of people remitting to Malaysia / Kuala Lumpur.

Yes, we don't want you to go TradeHill on us!

Heh, some day perhaps, thanks!

I'm curious to see when you do get a GCash transfer where you know the customer is from the U.S. and sent the funds using credit card (or bank transfer) through Remitly.

What I want to caution you on is to make sure you know what will happen in the case where the transaction on the Remitly side gets charged back by the cardholder or the bank transfer (ACH) gets reversed.  

Could you then be exposed to seeing a charge to your GCash (i.e., a reversal of a previous payment) as a result?

I owe you a beer and more for this, Stephen. If you happen to come over Manila, buzz me. Maraming salamat!