Seeds for Thought
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Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop Seller Fees (and What You Keep When You Sell Direct)
Selling on renowned e-commerce sites like Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop gives you the clout and the brand awareness, but it comes with a price – quite literally. As you may already know, selling items on these platforms does not mean you will get the exact amount you sold it for. All three platforms charge you various fees, and these fees compound. We break down the commission fee, transaction fees, program charges of Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok, so you can compare them on one page. It also
Disbursement in the Philippines: How Businesses Pay Money Out
Most of the attention in Philippine payments goes to money coming in. Card rates, GCash, QR Ph, checkout conversion. Fair enough. But every business also has a money-out problem, and it is usually the messier half of the ledger. Payroll every 15th and 30th. Contractor invoices. Supplier terms. Refunds you promised within three working days. Rider earnings. Commissions. Someone, somewhere in your company, is copying account numbers into a bank portal one row at a time. That entire process is di
Restaurant Customer Journey: Every Touchpoint, Mapped
The restaurant customer journey begins before a guest reaches your door and continues after they leave. It starts with a search query and ends with a decision about whether to return. Most operators manage the middle of that journey closely and leave the edges unmanaged. Food quality, plating, and floor service get daily attention. Discovery and payment don’t get any, at times. It’s often overlooked where guests form their strongest impressions. Complaints and one star reviews cluster around
Preventing Payment Scams: A Guide for Philippine Businesses
72% of surveyed Filipino consumers were targeted by a digital fraud attempt between August and December 2025. The global figure was 53%. That gap is not just a consumer problem. Every one of those attempts can have a business on the other side of it: a seller shipping goods against a fake receipt, a merchant dealing with a chargeback, or a finance team sending funds to a spoofed bank account. If you accept online payments in the Philippines, you are already in scope. This guide covers the payme
InstaPay vs PESONet in 2026: What Changed for PH Businesses
On 29 July 2026, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and Philippine Payments Management, Inc. launched InstaPay for Business, allowing eligible business and corporate accounts to send up to PHP 500,000 per transaction through participating institutions. The service does not impose a scheme-level limit on the number of transactions or aggregate daily value, although originating institutions may apply their own limits. A few weeks earlier, BSP lifted its moratorium on increases to InstaPay and PESONe
Dropshipping in the Philippines: Why COD May Not Be Optimal Anymore
You found a supplier. You built the store. You ran the ads. Then a Php1,200 order comes in, you pay the supplier upfront, the courier delivers it, and the customer refuses to accept the package. You just paid for the product, the shipping out, and the shipping back. You earned nothing. That is the hidden math of cash on delivery, and it remains a major payment option for dropshipping businesses in the Philippines. But the ground has shifted. Digital payments made up 64.7% of retail payment vol
Sales Invoice vs Official Receipt: What the BIR Requires
Since April 2024, the Official Receipt is no longer the BIR’s primary proof of sale. The Sales Invoice is, both for goods and for services. Most Philippine businesses have made the switch on paper. Far fewer have caught the part that actually costs money: the invoice you issue is now the document that starts your tax clock, whether or not your customer has paid you. This guide covers what to issue, when to issue it, and the two documents most SMEs still get wrong. The short answer The Invoic
InstaPay for Business: What the New ₱500,000 Transfer Limit Means for Philippine Businesses
For years, ₱50,000 was the most you could send in a single InstaPay transfer. Paying a ₱180,000 supplier invoice? Four transfers. Running payroll? Batch it through PESONet and wait, or cut a check. That changed on 29 July 2026. The BSP and Philippine Payments Management, Inc. (PPMI) raised InstaPay’s per-transaction limit for registered businesses from ₱50,000 to ₱500,000 on the same 24/7 real-time rail. More money, fewer transfers, same real-time speed. Here’s what changed, what didn’t, w