Brake in Manila: Central bank suspends incoming bank transfers to Coins.ph

Brake in Manila. The central bank of the Philippines has partially suspended incoming bank transfers to DCPay Philippines, the company that operates Coins.ph's e-wallet. Users of one of the country's oldest crypto platforms can still send their pesos back to their bank, but no longer fund their account from there.

The order concerns national payment rails. Betur Inc. holds the group's crypto license and is not covered by the measure. However, the supply of pesos to the trading accounts goes through this same wallet.

Philippine central bank blocks deposits arriving from bank account to Coins.ph wallet

Cash outflows and payments by national QR code remain possible for customers

The entity approved for the exchange of digital assets is not targeted, but loses its supply channel in pesos

Manila tightens control over e-wallets, centerpieces of $38 billion remittance market

Coins.ph: what the Philippine central bank suspended

The information comes from BitPinas, which cites a note from the Philippine Payments Management Inc. (PPMI). This organization accredited by the central bank manages the country's clearing houses. The suspension affects two channels, InstaPay and PESONet, and only concerns incoming flows. No public reason has been given.

InstaPay processes instant transfers up to 50,000 pesos, or around 760 euros. PESONet works in batches with same-day settlement and serves higher amounts. Together, these two chambers form the backbone of transfers between Philippine banks and e-wallets.

Exits remain open, as do payments by QR Ph, the national QR code standard. A Coins.ph customer can therefore empty their balance to their bank, pay a merchant at QR Ph, but no longer recharge their wallet from a bank account. For a platform that claims more than 18 million users, it is the entry faucet in pesos that is closing.

The legal separation between the two companies limits the formal scope of the decision. Betur Inc. retains its approval as a virtual asset service provider (VASP) and continues to operate the exchange service. But the peso has to land somewhere before you buy bitcoin, and that somewhere is called DCPay.

Crypto in the Philippines: Coins.ph, remittance mainstay under scrutiny

The restriction falls on an actor who is not a newcomer. Launched in 2014, Coins.ph is among the first crypto providers registered with the Philippine central bank. Gojek bought it in 2019 for around $72 million, before the Indonesian group resold it in 2022 to Wei Zhou, former financial director of Binance, for around 200 million.

The group operates with two separate approvals. DCPay carries the electronic money issuer license (which it will be recalled that it conditions direct access to national clearing houses, and therefore to the bank accounts of the population), while Betur carries the crypto license. Coins.ph has also been testing PHPC, a stablecoin backed by the peso, in the central bank's regulatory sandbox since 2024.

The Philippines receives more than $38 billion sent by its expatriate workers each year, one of the largest flows of its kind in the world. Electronic wallets and crypto rails have established themselves there as an alternative to historical operators and their commissions. The central bank has in turn been monitoring mule accounts since the adoption of the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act in 2024, a text which gives it the power to directly investigate suspicious accounts and freeze their flows.

Cutting off entries while leaving exits open remains the classic tool of the regulator when it suspects a flaw in account opening procedures. Clients are not trapped and funds continue to flow outwards. The pressure is on the commercial growth of the platform. Coins.ph has not lost any of its licenses.