InstaPay and PesoNet Fees Are Changing Fast, and Your Bank Probably Didn’t Tell You

InstaPay and PesoNet fees are the last thing on your mind the moment your Kuya in Qatar messages the family group chat: I’m sending the money now, get Nanay to the hospital right away. You open your banking app, key in the amount, hit send, and there it is, a transfer fee shaving off part of the money before it even leaves your account. Banks have been doing that to Filipinos for years, and most of us just accepted it as the cost of moving money in this country.

That’s changing right now. As of this week, two of the country’s biggest banks have either dropped their fees entirely or announced they’re about to. If you haven’t checked your bank’s rates since last year, you’re probably still budgeting for a charge that no longer exists, or worse, still using a bank that never planned to lower it.

Problem: Nobody Knows Which Bank Still Charges What

Bank fees in the Philippines change without much fanfare. A bank drops a rate on page four of its FAQ and moves on, and unless you’re the type who reads terms and conditions for fun (nobody in the Philippines does that, seriously), you’d never know.

InstaPay moves your money instantly, any hour, any day, including Christmas and Holy Week. PesoNet does the same job but in batches, cleared within the same banking day if you send it before cutoff. Both ride on infrastructure regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and for years, banks set their own fees within that system with little pressure to compete on price.

That pressure arrived in 2026. On June 17, the BSP’s Monetary Board lifted its moratorium on InstaPay and PesoNet fee changes through Circular 1238, a rule that also requires banks to keep interbank transfer fees close to the actual “switch cost” of processing a transaction, reportedly around ₱1.50. Two weeks later, BPI announced its fees were gone for good. RCBC followed days after that. Metrobank and Landbank had already cut theirs months earlier. A cost that banks treated as fixed for years has turned into a genuine price war, and the ordinary depositor benefits, provided they know where to look.

Solution: Here’s What Every Major Bank Actually Charges (as of July 2026)

Some banks are now completely free. Others are free with conditions you need to read carefully. A few are still charging what they always have, hoping you won’t notice or won’t switch.

*RCBC’s “free” comes with fine print: up to 30 free InstaPay transfers a month through the Pulz app, each worth at least ₱100, plus unlimited free peer-to-peer transfers through DiskarTech. Go over 30 or send less than ₱100, and you’re back to paying ₱10.

Notice the gap between BPI and RCBC. Both banks are advertising “free,” but BPI removed the fee entirely, no conditions, no cap, no minimum amount. RCBC’s version only applies through specific apps and only up to a monthly ceiling. Same headline, different reality. Read past the announcement before you switch banks based on a press release.

Fees also move fast this year. Some of the numbers above are promotional rates tied to specific dates, and a bank that charges ₱5 today might jump back to ₱12 next month once a promo period lapses. Check your bank’s app before every large transfer if the fee matters to you.

Impact: What This Actually Means for Your Wallet

Do the math on someone who sends money three or four times a week, common for OFW families, freelancers paying suppliers, or anyone splitting bills with roommates. At ₱15 to ₱25 per transfer, that adds up to roughly ₱200 to ₱400 a month, gone to fees that provide zero additional value over a free transfer at another bank.

For OFW families specifically, this matters more than it looks. Money sent home for tuition, hospital bills, or an emergency doesn’t need to lose ₱25 to ₱50 in transit fees on top of whatever the remittance platform already charged upstream. Every peso that survives the fee gauntlet is a peso that reaches Nanay’s hospital bill instead of a bank’s processing revenue.

Small businesses feel it too. A sari-sari store owner paying five suppliers a week through InstaPay, or a small online seller settling COD remittances daily, has been bleeding fees that a free-tier account would wipe out. Multiply that by a year and it’s real money.

Tech Patrol Insight

The interesting part isn’t that fees are dropping. It’s why they’re all dropping at the same time.

BSP Circular 1238 mandated fair pricing, tying fees to actual processing cost rather than whatever a bank felt like charging. The moment the moratorium on fee changes lifted, banks faced a choice: adjust the rate down quietly, or go big and turn it into a marketing moment. BPI picked the second option and got a wave of coverage timed neatly around its 175th anniversary. RCBC followed within days, unwilling to let BPI own the “free transfers” narrative alone. Landbank and Metrobank had already made their move months earlier, betting correctly that legacy banks needed to compete with digital-only players like UnionDigital and GoTyme on the one thing that actually annoys ordinary depositors: fees.

This also signals where digital banks like UnionDigital, GoTyme, and Maya now sit in the market. They built their entire pitch around low or zero fees while legacy banks charged ₱25 without blinking. Legacy banks are now matching or beating them, and the digital banks’ original advantage narrows by the month. Expect more movement before the year ends, possibly another major bank matching BPI’s zero-fee stance to avoid looking like the last one standing with a fee schedule from 2020.

For Filipino readers, the practical lesson is simple: your bank loyalty shouldn’t be about the logo or the branch nearest your barangay. It should follow whichever institution is currently giving your money the least friction to move.

FAQs

Final Thoughts

Bank fees used to be something you just paid, the way you accept EDSA traffic or the surge pricing on a Grab ride during a downpour. Nothing you can do about it, you’d shrug, so you just let it slide. That assumption doesn’t hold anymore. Banks are actively competing for your transfers now, and the only reason you’d keep paying ₱25 a pop is not checking what your neighbor’s bank charges.

Check your app today. Compare it against this list. If your bank hasn’t moved in months while BPI and RCBC just went free, the ₱15 or ₱25 you keep paying per transfer isn’t loyalty. It’s a fee your bank is betting you’ll never bother to question. Ask anyway, especially if it’s money headed to Nanay.