Using GCash to Contribute to COVID-19 Donation Drives

It has really been a pretty rough two weeks now for the COVID-19 quarantine. But for our frontliners and daily wage earners, it has been an eternity. As the government tries its best to address the pandemic, we can also do our part to contribute.

Since we have fintech channels like GCash, we can more easily donate to charities that support our vulnerable neighbors and health workers.

What is GCash? How do I use GCash?

Don’t worry, we all started from scratch some time. I got you. Here is my in depth guide about what GCash is.

How do I donate if I don’t know where and how to cash-in in the first place?

Here is a list of some allowed cash-in methods currently. If you have a BPI or a Unionbank or a Paypal account, then it’s easy to link it to GCash and transfer money.

If you have a different bank account, GCash debit card cash-in seems to be intermittently working currently. As an alternative, you can also initiate a bank to bank transfer from your bank app of choice. For many bank apps, the service charge is waived for the service at the moment. The recipient should be “G-XChange, Inc” and the account number is your GCash mobile number.

If you are opting to cash-in via over-the-counter, your mileage may vary since the quarantine makes store hours ambiguous at best. But if you are fortunate enough, here is my cash-in guide for you.

What are some donation drives we can contribute to?

Here are some examples that we can see in the official GCash FB page.

For those affected by no work no pay policy and also our poor neighbors, we can donate to the ABS-CBN Foundation and Caritas Manila.

For our medical front liners, we can donate to the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Fintech Alliance and the #FightCOVID19 Group.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

How do I donate via GCash Pay Bills?

From the GCash main app page, click on Pay Bills, then select Others. Under Others, we can see different charity institutions. You can choose which you are donating to and enter how much you want to donate. For the GCash official donation drive, we can select the FightCOVID19 biller.

• 

• 

• 

How do I donate to a specific fundraiser via Send Money?

You can send money to the GCash number the fundraiser is promoting. Although, please be careful in using this feature. Any wrong input in the number will invalidate your donation and may be given to a different GCash user. In these cases, you cannot get the money back and GCash support cannot help you as it is deemed user input error.

Let me repeat myself: please confirm recipient before sending money.

How do I donate via Bank Transfer?

You can also send via Bank Transfer in the app, since there is no fee. You just need the specific bank, bank account name and account number of the recipient. Again, please do your due diligence before sending your money to a bank account as there are no retries.

• 

• 

What other donation initiatives can I contribute to?

Here is a list of other donation drives and fundraisers I’ve seen around, please let me know if you want to suggest others.

• Flipscience – a huge list of groups that are asking for donations
• LifeCycles – an FB page for renting or buying bikes for frontliners
• Booky – another list to pick from our friends in Booky
• Metrodeal – has Kaya Natin vouchers to help frontliners; also has GCash integration

Summary

I showed how to donate to different donation drives via Pay Bills, Send Money and Bank Transfer. Please double check if the recipient is a legitimately a helping hand or a scammer in disguise.

---

---