I have a little over P500,000 sitting in my fiancee's savings account. I wired the money over to the Philippines from my credit union savings account. When the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) received the wire, they converted the money into pesos and deposited it into her savings account. Now I am getting ready to bring my fiancee back to the states with me and I would like to change the pesos back into dollars to bring back with me. BPI says they can't change the pesos back into dollars. I would like to know from someone who has faced this problem, how can I change the pesos back into dollars. I was told to do it through Western Union, but Western Union says they have to transfer the money to a Western Union Office near my home in the US. That means I would have to leave the money over here and hopefully when I get back to the states the money will be waiting for me at a Western Union ofice at my home. I don't trust people here in the Philippines, so how can I be assured my money will be there in the states when I get there? If it isn't there, I will be in one country trying to get my money from another country.
Does anyone know how I can exchange the pesos here in the Philippines and have the dollar cash in my hands when I leave here to go back to the states? I know some banks have dollar accounts, but I need to change my pesos into dollars before I can open a dollar account. Western Union can't change the pesos for me and give me the dollar cash value.
I woild appreciate any help anyone can give me concerning this matter.

Why not send the money to someone in the USA while you are in the Phillipines via Western Union??
Maybe you trust people here......
Otherwise, take the money out in cash and change it at the bureau de change at the Phillipino airport.

They don't traveler's checks? I had phpesos left over and just kept them, when i got back to louisiana, my bank exchanged it for me. My gf exchanges U.S. dollars to php in the mall, in GenSan. I dont know the name of it, sorry, good luck!

This is easy! Go to a 'money changer' in Manila and have them convert it to dollars....We use money changers when we arrive--dollars to pesos--and if any pesos are left, go back and convert them to dollars using a money changer. They're everywhere around the U.S. Embassy in Ermita, etc.

you may try to go to SM and exchanged it there. I changed us dollars to pesos I am sure they can do the reverse. Since I notice when I was in line a lot of people exchanging USDollars to Pesos

hope this helps

Yogi

It's too late now, but for others that may be contemplating sending a large amount of dollars to a bank account in the Philippines and taking the leftovers back to the U.S. -- open a dollar account at the bank and keep the money in dollars. You can make withdrawls converted to pesos and you can withdrawl the balance in dollars when you are ready to come to the U.S. You are going to incur a significant penalty on the conversion from pesos back to dollars now.

You can carry up to $10,000 without having any additional paperwork back to the U.S. with you to avoid the Western Union charges. 500,000PHP coverted back to dollars at the money changers will be less than $10,000.

Like John said, it is too late to put the money in a dollar account. I assume if you can afford to transfer $10K to the PI you can afford to leave it there? Does the account have an ATM card on it? If so I suggest using the money while in the PI. The conversions rate back to dollars is going to eat you alive.
Current exchange rate has $10 = 488,200 peso, exchanging it back to dollars 488,200 peso to $9,959.20, a $40 difference. not as bad as I thought. But the banks will charge you a transfer fee and exchange fee... might want to just transfer the money back to the account it came from and let you bank do the conversion. Good luck, Ken & Maria

Don't use Western Union, they will charge you a large amount to transfer the money and then will give you a poor conversion rate so make money coming and going.

You should be able to have the bank in the Philippines do a wire transfer to a bank in America and the banking system will do the conversion using the current day's going rate. The peso is trading at about 48.93 to the U.S. dollar. It really seems to be changing a lot from day to day.