I use Bitcoin for remittance from US to Germany.
The guys in the office who have the same pay setup usually pay around 5% to get euros. But they do it through their bank. They have to pay an international wire transfer fee plus they exchange rate they give is always a few percentage off of the real exchange rate.
I get paid in bitcoins through BitWage and charge 10% to sell bitcoins via localbitcoins.
Ideally for those in the Philippines or anywhere else for that matter they would do something similar. The person in the US could choose to get a percentage of their paycheck direct deposited into bitcoins. Then their family back home could set up a business selling bitcoins, even for just 1-2% and they come out ahead while providing a good service to the locals who want to buy bitcoins at a good rate.
I always have a lot more people buying bitcoins with euros than I can spend in a month, so I just deposit the extra in the bank and buy more bitcoins.
Though people need to remember, there are over 500,000 Western Union locations in the world. They're not going down any time soon, if just for the convenience of it.
One guy here at work sends money to his ex-wife via Western Union. He's into bitcoins and has some and we tried to figure out how he could do the same thing using bitcoins. But his ex always wants that money the same day. She could probably do localbitcoins but I think he'd rather pay the extra money than deal with fighting with her over it.
In the Philippines we now have Free Instant Atm Cardless withdrawal. Western Union can't beat that. Trasferring from bitcoin to local currency is practically zero rate.
