Maybe you have had the moment. You open your banking app to send P500 to your godson for his birthday, and the screen politely informs you that this will cost you P25. Nakakagulat. Five percent of your kindness, gone—not to your godson, not to charity, but to a fee whose only visible job is existing. Haay naku.
You are not alone in your suffering. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) received and processed more than 120,000 consumer complaints in 2025, a 72.6 percent jump from 70,112 the year before. Back in 2021, there were only 19,181. By September this year, the BSP said this year’s tally had already passed last year’s total—and the year isn’t even over. Clearly, the Filipino consumer has found his voice, and that voice is saying, “Ano ’to?!”
Consider the dormancy fee, the bank’s way of punishing you for being too disciplined to touch your savings. You leave P2,000 in an account “for emergencies,” forget about it for two years, and come back to find the bank has been quietly snacking on it, one monthly charge at a time. Your money did not grow. It shrank. Giatay ba! Even the alkansya under your bed is more loyal—at least it never sends you an invoice.
Then there is the below-maintaining-balance fee, which charges you for not having enough money. Read that again. You are being fined for being broke. It is like a carinderia charging you extra because you only ordered rice and sabaw. Nakakahiya—for whom, exactly, we are still deciding.
Let us not forget the account closure fee: you want to leave, and leaving costs extra. It is the financial equivalent of an ex who sends you a bill for the breakup. And of course, there is the off-us ATM fee, which you pay for the joy of withdrawing your own money from a machine that was just standing there anyway.
E-wallets were supposed to save us. To be fair, they made life easier—until the cash-out fees, the charges after your free transfers run out, and that little P10 or P15 that appears whenever you send money “to other banks.” Ten pesos sounds harmless, until you realize that is a couple of pandesal for breakfast. Haay naku, talaga.
The money transfer platforms are no better. I recently had P2,200 as my share in the share of copra from the province but the senile in me forgot about it for more than 90 days. The sonamagan took P440 off the remittance as holding fee, haay naku uli!
Fortunately, the BSP has blown the whistle. Under Circular No. 1238, issued in June 2026, banks and e-money issuers must base electronic transfer fees on actual costs, keep digital charges lower than over-the-counter ones, and make sure recipients of person-to-person transfers get the full amount—no mysterious deductions. Small merchants must also be able to receive digital payments for free. The BSP later clarified that the rule is about fair, cost-based pricing, not zero fees, so don’t order the lechon just yet. Still, the BSP’s own fee disclosure list now shows plenty of banks offering free InstaPay and PESONet transfers. Nakagulat—in a good way, for once.
What can we do?
First, read the fee schedule before you open an account. Yes, the fine print is long. So is a teleserye, and you finished three of those last month. Second, compare. The BSP publishes a summary of transfer fees across the institutions it supervises, so shop around the way you would for a new phone. Third, if a charge feels unreasonable or unexplained, complain—first to your bank, and if that goes nowhere, to the BSP through its chatbot BOB, by email, by phone, or at its consumer assistance desk. “Unreasonable charges” is literally a complaint category. Use it.
We Filipinos are not asking for everything to be free. We understand that servers cost money and that fraud prevention does not run on prayer alone. We just want fees that make sense, are explained clearly, and don’t make us gasp in the middle of a jeepney ride. Is that too much to ask? Haay naku.
Apparently, for some, it costs ₱25 to find out.
The Pedantic is a weekly commentary by Jun Vallecera, editor of Context.ph, sometime cat father to 12 puspins, and a 38-year veteran of watching the Philippine economy misbehave. He does his own laundry, which may explain his continued employment at home, and occasionally wonders why his wife has not left him yet. His views are entirely his own, although he remains unconvinced that anyone is keeping score.
