[CLOSED] Mang Sweeney's: send money to the Philippines through bitcoin

[MadSweeney]

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.

[Stephen Gornick]

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.

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

[MadSweeney]

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.

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

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.

[Dabs]

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.

[MadSweeney]

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.

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

[Dabs]

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.

[MadSweeney]

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.

[Dabs]

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.

[fcmatt]

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

[Dabs]

@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.)

[MadSweeney]

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.

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]

Without I studying this whole post.. if I wanted to send 50 dollars
as a birthday gift to Phil...

How much would it cost and how much of that USD would end up in
their hands?

So what is your cut plus any fees of that 50 USD?

Basically I am trying to figure out is small amounts are now feasible
while in the past small amounts were a bad way to go.

thanks.

[MadSweeney]

Without I studying this whole post.. if I wanted to send 50 dollars
as a birthday gift to Phil...

How much would it cost and how much of that USD would end up in
their hands?

So what is your cut plus any fees of that 50 USD?

Basically I am trying to figure out is small amounts are now feasible
while in the past small amounts were a bad way to go.

thanks.

At, say, 11.6 USD/BTC, you will send 4.3103 BTC to me. Deduct my fixed-rate fee of 0.1 BTC from that, and we now have 4.2103 BTC. My current rate is 485 PHP. I'll then buy your 4.2103 BTC for 2,042 PHP. Out of this peso amount, I will further take fees to pay for the service charges of the transfer agency.

Having asked your friend what way she'll receive the money, you would instruct me to have it transferred through, say, SmartMoney, which would charge 100 PHP for the transfer. She should receive 1,942 PHP. At 42.1039 PHP/USD, she would have received an equivalent of 45.70 USD.

This can be expressed as:

TOTAL TO BE RECEIVED = BTC SOLD - INTERMEDIARY FEES
BTC SOLD = BTC SENT - FIXED FEE

My current rate in Php can be looked up in https://localbitcoins.com/accounts/profile/mangsweeney/. I set it at 3% below MtGox 24-hour average usually--sometimes I use MtGox last price during accelerated price movements or take 4% cut to cover increased costs. There's also an additional 0.1 BTC fixed-rate fee, as I mentioned before. 

[Edited for reference]

[MadSweeney]

This article shows how naive my estimate of fees were for sending money through cellphones http://www.malaya.com.ph/index.php/business/business-news/8408-billions-sent-thru-phones

According to this you'll probably pay 40-50 pesos for every 1,000 pesos sent. They are cheaper than pawnshops and other remittance centers, but LBC, Cebuana Lhuiller, and Western Union have more branches.

I should prioritize setting up and learning more of these payment modes so that I can also reach the unbanked.

[MadSweeney]

Mang Sweeney's service is mentioned in Bitcoin Money blog

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/30706441112/august-2012-results

[MadSweeney]

SmartMoney is now activated. I can now remit payments to someone with a cellphone and access to a SmartMoney store.

[paraipan]

SmartMoney is now activated. I can now remit payments to someone with a cellphone and access to a SmartMoney store.

Nice  

Will recommend your service everywhere I can.

[MadSweeney]

Thank you, paraipan. The bitcoin community continues to be amazing!

[zebedee]

I sold 30-odd coins to Mang Sweeney; the service was excellent and the PHP were delivered into the bank a/c as promised.

[MadSweeney]

I have reduced my rates against MtGox last price while there is big demand by sellers and there is a price rally.