GCASH INVESTMENT REVIEW 2021 | FAILED ATTEMPT TO GINVEST: HOW TO INVEST WITHOUT GCASH 📱💵📈
Channel: ZIGGING by Mark Sigg
Date: 23/03/2021

Always wanted to invest in US stocks but had limited funds? With GCash, it's now possible to invest as little as P1,000 in the world's best performing stocks such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Visa! Another first for Philippines' telecommunication leader Globe Telecom's FinTech arm: GCash. In Feb 3 2021, GCash and Globe announced that they have launched this investment product that makes world-class investing within the reach of every Filipino: the GCash GInvest Technology Feeder Fund. Excitedly, I rushed to update my GCash app and avail of this deal ---an offer that's a far cry and almost incomparable to what banks or other online trading platforms have to offer! This excitement was however dampened I encountered roadblocks in being able to successfully invest in the said index funds. From the get-go, I couldn't proceed to the GInvest portion of the GCash app because I had not completed verification of my GCash account. As I tried to complete this verification process, I could not complete it because of failing to the One-Time Password (OTP) via email. I thought this might be an easy fix but surprisingly, this ordeal took me over two weeks to complete! For some reason, the GCash customer support team could not understand my concern despite showing numerous screenshots of my problem. After that ordeal, my account was finally verified and now I should be able to proceed with investing right? WRONG! When I'd select the GInvest icon , I kept getting an error message that "GInvest is not yet available to Payroll Accounts". Knowing that my account was miscategorized, I raised this customer support and thankfully, this time it only took 5-7 days to resolve. Once  done, I again hurriedly look to invest in the GInvest Technology Feeder Fund. To my surprise, only 1 of the 5 available investment funds were available for investing. The index fund I wanted to invest in was unavailable. Big suprise for me since the press release was dated February 3 and this was already an entire month after! So i did my homework to research further if there's anything I can do. I came across these GCash investment funds were being powered by two other groups: ATRAM & Seedbox Philippines. I found the Global Technology Feeder Fund on the ATRAM website and I was able to get important information: despite the fund only showing results for 1-year since it was newly incepted, the index fund is actually tracking the MSCI World IT Index Fund by Morgan Stanley, which had annualized returns of 18% in the last 10-years. This was a reassuring piece of historical data that Globe should also be making known to its prospective investors. As I clicked on "Invest Now", the ATRAM website brought me the Seedbox Philippines website. This website was also very helpful in stating cut-off times, settlement periods, and other valuable information previously unavailable from the GCash app and the GCash website. I looked to invest directly through Seedbox Philippines and was able to successfully complete the  application process. The next step was to complete the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process which is completed through a video call. Unfortunately, the next available date for Seedbox Philippines to do this was April 26! Again, I am left to wait and so that brings us to now, where I'm waiting for GCash to notify me of the availability of the fund or the Seedbox KYC video call, whichever comes first. LOL! This has been a surprising ordeal, thinking that I would have been able to invest in GCash GInvest products as quickly as a few minutes. But I'm happy that this has led me to do some research to understand the funds better. While I continue to be excited, my investment appetite has been tempered. The challenge of coordinating with GCash customer support and them not understanding my problem in verification as well as the delays encountered have led me to be hesitant. I of course would want easy access to my funds and talk to knowledgable customer support once I do invest. So while I will continue to invest, I am cautious about not putting too much funds. This also brought about the looming concern that Phil. telcos have had some deceiptful practices such as "Nakaw Load", which has been legitimately recognized by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) as needed to be addressed urgently. Feelings of trusting a non-bank with my money surfaced, thus I do have some hesitation. I'd actually prefer investing via Seedbox Philippines which, despite the long waiting time to complete the KYC, has actually been pleasing to deal with. 

#GCash
#Investing

Get PHP 70 worth of GCash freebies here: https://gcsh.app/r/ZphO465

If you're interested in similar investment products offered by others, check these out below:

Seedbox Philppines:
http://bit.ly/zigseedbox