RCBC Waives Fees on US Virtual Account Transfers to the Philippines

By Fintech News Philippines

RCBC has waived transfer fees on its U.S. Virtual Account, a cross-border banking service under RCBC Pulz that lets Filipinos in the United States send money to the Philippines.

The waiver took effect on August 1, according to Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer Lito Villanueva, who announced it during a keynote at the International Asian American Business Expo in Torrance, California, held August 7 to 8.

Villanueva positioned the fee waiver as part of RCBC’s broader push to serve the Filipino diaspora, alongside services such as the MySSS Card powered by RCBC DiskarTech.

An estimated 500,000 Filipinos live in the Los Angeles area, one of the largest Filipino communities in the United States.

He pointed to the scale of overseas Filipino remittances, which made up more than 7.3% of the Philippine economy in 2025, as reason for banks to keep improving cross-border services for Filipino families.

“When something hits 7% of a nation’s GDP in most industries, that’s not a category anymore. That’s the whole industry,” Villanueva said. “It deserves to be treated as core national infrastructure, not a footnote in a remittance report.”

The expo also opened discussions with Filipino-American business leaders on potential new use cases, including real estate payments from the US to the Philippines and transactions flowing the other way.

RCBC said the conversations reflected growing interest from the diaspora business community in strengthening financial links between the two countries.

The engagement builds on RCBC’s other outreach to Filipino communities in the US this year, including meetings with Philippine consular officials in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

It also follows RCBC securing Euromoney’s Best Bank for Digital award for a seventh consecutive year, the first bank in Asia to reach that streak.

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