How I Paid My Bills During Enhanced Community Quarantine Due To Covid-19

Currently, we are experiencing Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in the entire Luzon to stop the Covid Virus to spread and to give time to enhance our health care system.  We have limited movements and going to the supermarket to buy essentials and medicines and do transactions to the back are only legit activities you can do outside by quarantine pass holders.  Banking and utility companies extend the due dates of the bill as most of the costumers cannot pay during ECQ and some are in "No Work, No Pay Policy".  Good gestures for those companies.  Though this case will just accumulate the bills of the previous month and the current one and will cause so much headache at the end of the day.  So I escaped this situation, at least for some of my bills which I already budgeted.  

So how I paid some of my bills?

I am also afraid to get the Covid virus, hence going to the bank is not an option as well.  As much as possible I want to have a contactless transaction for most of the time.   Luckily, I have this application where I can transfer money from my bank account to this application, and make payment thru the application.  If you are wondering what the application is, it is GCash. GCash is a micropayment service that transforms your mobile phone into a virtual wallet, and use this for payment and other services such as loading your phone.  I was hesitant at first in downloading this application because at that time you must go to 711 and other kiosks to transfer money to GCASH.  Fortunately, as time went by GCash made several adjustments and made a partnership with other banks. One of these is you can now transfer the money or cash-in directly from your bank thru GCash.  I can attest for BPI.  Security features are there before you can transfer the money from your BPI account.  It only takes a few minutes to credit the money to your GCash account.  You can now use the money on it to pay your bills.  Since GCash serves more utilities and banks, this has been my go-to in paying bills. No paper and registrations needed. The reason why I don't enroll my utilities to my bank.  Just go to Pay Bills and select the utility that you need to pay. 

 I often visit the following billers and so far I have not experienced any uncredited payment:

1. Electric Utilities e.g. Meralco

2. Water Utilities e.g.  Maynilad, Manila Water

3. Cable/Internet e.g Cignal, Sky Cable

4. Telecoms e.g. Globe, PLDT DSL, Bayantel

5. Credit Card e.g. HSBC, Citibank, BDO

I was able to pay as well my tax due here when I submitted my income tax return using eBIR.  eBIR is your go-to if you don't want to submit a paper to the BIR office.

Aside from this, I also use GCASH in paying my groceries to their accredited stores.  You just need to scan the QR code in the cashier.  No Cash, No Problem.

GCash really saved me from accumulating my bills while totally practicing social distancing.  I highly recommend downloading this application (Android or Apple) as this will be part of the new norm to avoid the crowd and decrease the risk of having covid-19.

*Note this is not a sponsored post. I am just sharing the convenience brings by GCash to my life.