How to cash out crypto in the Philippines, and where GCash fits

A cash-out in the Philippines is two separate steps, not one: first you turn the coin into pesos, then you move those pesos onto a local rail. GCash belongs to the second step, which is why the honest answer to “how do I cash out to GCash” starts with where the pesos are made, and on our 1 November 2026 reading of peso advert lists GCash was the most common payment method on the sell side of all four offshore venues we read, appearing on 73 per cent of MEXC’s 59 sell adverts and 55 per cent of Binance’s 210.

For the first step, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas publishes a register of virtual asset service providers. This page sets out who is named on that register, what the BSP’s January 2026 memorandum says to the institutions it is addressed to, and what we counted on four offshore peso advert lists on 1 November 2026.

The BSP publishes a register of VASPs, and it has nine entries

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas publishes a document headed List of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP), marked As of 15 July 2026 and sourced to its TRISD Database. We read that PDF on the BSP’s own site on 1 November 2026. It carries nine numbered entries in three sections, named as follows.

Section heading on the list	Entries
ACTIVE - NON-BANK VASPs	Betur Inc. (doing business under the name and style of COINS.PH); Maya Philippines, Inc.; Moneybees Forex Corp.; Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX); TopJuan Technologies Corporation; WIBS PHP, Inc.
INACTIVE/NOT OPERATIONAL - NON BANK VASPs	Direct Agent 5 (also doing business under the name and style of SurgePay mobile app)
ACTIVE - BANK VASP	GoTyme Bank Corporation; Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc.

Binance, OKX, Bybit and MEXC do not appear anywhere on that list. Read that for exactly what it is: a fact about one BSP document dated 15 July 2026. It is not a claim that any of those four is unlicensed, banned or prohibited here, and being on the list is a registration fact rather than a verdict about anyone’s money.

What the memorandum says, and who it binds

BSP Memorandum No. M-2026-003, dated 30 January 2026 and signed by Judith E. Sungsai as Sector-in-Charge, is addressed To: All BSP Supervised Financial Institutions (BSFIs). Its subject is Reminders on Sound Risk Management Practices when Dealing with Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), and it states that it supersedes the provisions under BSP Memorandum M-2019-021 dated 23 July 2019. We read this PDF on 1 November 2026 as well.

Item 1 tells BSFIs to deal only with:

1. VASPs duly registered with and authorized by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
2. Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs) duly registered with and authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
3. Offshore VASPs duly registered, licensed or authorized to operate as a VASP or CASP in their home country.
4. Other foreign counterparties duly registered or licensed in their home country.

The same item states that dealings, transactions and business relationships with VASPs and other foreign counterparties, whether local or offshore, that are neither registered with nor authorized by the BSP, the SEC, the AMLC or any other equivalent competent regulatory or supervisory agency locally and abroad, are strictly prohibited. It then states: “Direct access of retail customers residing in the Philippines, both natural or juridical persons, to offshore VASPs, whether licensed or unlicensed/unregistered in their home countries, unless these are registered with the BSP or the SEC, is not allowed.”

Here is the limit, stated plainly: that duty sits on the institutions the memorandum names, All BSP Supervised Financial Institutions. This page is not telling you what your own personal position is, and it is not telling you whether your own buying, selling, holding or cashing out is allowed.

Two further things the memorandum requires of those institutions are worth knowing because they shape how an institution may look at this kind of flow. It requires BSFIs to obtain proof of registration, such as a Certificate of Registration or Certificate of Authority, with the BSP, the SEC and the Anti-Money Laundering Council, and to independently validate this against the lists of registered BSFIs and covered persons on the BSP and AMLC websites. And it lists, as an example of an appropriate control, limiting large transfers to unknown offshore crypto exchanges unless certain conditions are met, giving verified source of funds as the example condition.

What we counted on the peso advert lists

We read the USDT peso advert lists on Binance, OKX, Bybit and MEXC on 1 November 2026 and publish the running series at our USDT to peso rate page. Reading a public advert list tells us what traders were asking on one day. It tells us nothing about whether a venue is registered anywhere, and one day is not an average or a trend.

Reading, 1 Nov 2026	Binance	OKX	Bybit	MEXC
Sell adverts counted	210	176	61	59
Share offering GCash	55%	67%	70%	73%
Buy-to-sell gap at 5,000 pesos	0.77%	0.25%	1.73%	1.01%
Median sell advert vs venue reference rate	0.99	0.98965	0.98	0.98
Smallest advertised minimum order	500 pesos	56 pesos	100 pesos	500 pesos

Two of those rows are the cost of the route. The buy-to-sell gap is the distance between the typical buy rate and the typical sell rate at a 5,000 peso order size, and it is the round-trip cost of using an advert list, paid on top of any venue fee. It is not a fee the venue charges. The reference-rate row says the same thing from the other side: the typical sell advert sat below the venue’s own reference rate on all four venues, so selling into an advert list means accepting a discount.

Payment windows differed sharply on the sell side. On our 1 November 2026 reading, 87 per cent of Bybit sell adverts gave a 30 minute window and 58 per cent of MEXC’s gave 30 minutes, while 55 per cent of Binance’s gave 15 minutes. OKX’s were spread across 60, 120 and 15 minutes at roughly a quarter each.

What we could not confirm

• GCash’s own help centre returned HTTP 403 to us on 1 November 2026, so this page states nothing about GCash’s fees, limits, verification tiers or in-app steps. Those live inside the app.
• We hold no measurement of how long a peso cash-out takes to land on any of these routes. We have not timed one.
• We have never placed one of these P2P orders, so we describe no sequence of steps and make no claim about what happens at any step of one.

The number that decides it

Of everything on this page, the round-trip gap is the figure that changes the answer, because it is what the route costs you whichever rail receives the pesos. On 1 November 2026 that gap ran from 0.25 per cent on OKX to 1.73 per cent on Bybit at a 5,000 peso order size, and the median sell advert sat at a discount to the venue’s reference rate everywhere we looked. The register question sits alongside it rather than replacing it: six active non-bank VASPs and two banks appear on the BSP’s list of 15 July 2026, and the four venues above do not.

Rather than send you to a venue to check a rate, we keep the counting in public: the peso series is at /rates/usdt-to-php/, dated every day we read it. If you want the mechanics of what a round-trip gap is before you weigh one, see our glossary entry on spread.

Education only, not financial advice, and trading carries a risk of loss.