Money in the Philippines.

The currency is the peso (PHP, ₱), divided into 100 centavos, though you'll rarely handle anything below a peso. Notes come in ₱20, ₱50, ₱100, ₱200, ₱500 and ₱1,000, and coins in ₱1, ₱5, ₱10 and ₱20. Two note designs circulate side by side, the older paper notes and newer polymer (plastic) ones, and both are valid, so don't be thrown when you're handed a mix.

To orient yourself on prices: a local carinderia meal runs about ₱80 to ₱200, a jeepney ride starts around ₱13 to ₱15, a bottle of water is ₱20 or so, a beer from a store ₱50 to ₱75, and a Grab across a city ₱150 to ₱400. US dollars aren't spendable on any of this, so treat foreign cash as something to exchange, not to pay with.

In the cities your card handles the big stuff. Visa and Mastercard are taken across malls (SM, Robinsons, Ayala), supermarkets, hotels and mid-range and upmarket restaurants in Manila, Cebu, Boracay and the other hubs. Step outside those, into jeepneys, tricycles, wet markets, carinderias, sari-sari stores, small homestays and most of the smaller islands, and it's cash only. American Express is accepted in far fewer places, so carry a Visa or Mastercard as your main card.

Where you'll meet friction is the surcharge. Smaller independent shops and some tours add 2 to 3% for paying by card to cover the processing fee; malls and chains generally don't. It's rarely worth an argument, so keep enough cash for those places and put everything else on the card. Separately, your own bank may charge a foreign-transaction fee on every payment abroad, which is exactly what the calculator below helps you dodge with the right card.

Contactless is a moving target here. Google Pay has started rolling out and works at tap-enabled terminals in the cities, while Apple Pay availability remains limited, so check current support before relying on either. Where a phone wallet does work it's safer than the physical card, since the terminal only ever sees a one-time token, but the everyday local rail is QR through GCash and Maya rather than card tap, so treat contactless as a city bonus, not something to rely on countrywide.

Carry more cash than you would in a card-first country. Cards cover city hotels and bigger restaurants; cash is for the day's real spending: jeepneys and tricycles, market food, sari-sari stores, tips and anywhere off the main tourist grid. The single most important cash rule in the Philippines is about the islands: draw your bulk cash in a city before you go. El Nido, Coron and Siargao have only a handful of ATMs that routinely run out of cash, go offline or fail in a blackout, and much of each town is cash-only.

An ATM is the simplest way to get pesos, but if you've brought cash from home or want to change a larger sum at once, a city money changer usually beats the banks and the airport. Two things decide whether you get a fair deal: where you change, and how you handle the count.

Locals pay for almost everything by scanning a QR Ph code, the national QR standard the central bank mandated, through the GCash and Maya e-wallets. It runs daily life for Filipinos, but for a short-term visitor it's the one payment method that's still difficult for most visitors to set up, because the wallets are built around a local mobile number and ID.

Most visitors never need this. But if you're paying a hotel or tour deposit, sending money to family, or funding a longer stay, the rate you're quoted is rarely the rate you get. Most of the cost isn't the visible fee. It's a markup buried in the exchange rate, often a few percent you never see itemized.

The mid-market rate is the real mid-point you'd see on Google, and it's the benchmark a fair transfer should track. Specialist services like Wise and Instarem land within about 1% of it, and Wise pays out in pesos to a Philippine bank account or straight to a GCash wallet, usually fast. A high-street bank wire can quietly cost several percent once the rate markup and correspondent-bank fees are counted, and it takes longer.