Filipino Scam Victims Lose Money Through E-Wallets Far More Than Their ASEAN Neighbors

Filipinos who get scammed are far more likely than their neighbors to lose the money through an e-wallet. A new analytical note from the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) found that 74 percent of Filipino scam victims who lost money said the scammer received it through a digital or e-wallet transfer. The average across the ASEAN economies surveyed was 34 percent (AMRO, Context.ph).

That makes the Philippines the clear outlier in the region. In seven of the nine economies AMRO covered, wire or bank transfers were the channel victims named most often. Only 14 percent of Filipino victims who lost money pointed to bank or wire transfers, compared with 52 percent across the ASEAN group. AMRO built these figures from Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) survey data, and it cautions that sample sizes for single questions are small, so the numbers are best read as broad patterns. They also describe how scammers were paid, not which payment method Filipinos use most overall.

Getting money back is the hard part. Across the selected ASEAN economies, 72 percent of victims who lost money reported the scam, yet only 20 percent recovered any funds or had the payment blocked. In the selected Plus-3 economies of Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong, the figure was 46 percent. AMRO points out that fast payment systems, which settle around the clock and often cannot be recalled, leave very little time to stop a transfer once a victim has authorized it. Its note calls for earlier detection, quicker fund freezing, better information sharing between institutions, and closer cross-border cooperation.

The warning comes alongside a separate concern raised in Manila. ASEAN Foundation executive director Piti Srisangnam said the Philippines has become one of the hotspots for scam operations in the region, as activity spreads beyond the Cambodia border areas. "It has not only happened in Cambodia anymore. We see some activities in the borders of Myanmar, in the Philippines and in Timor-Leste as well," he said, as reported by The Philippine Star. Citing GASA, he said Filipinos lost an estimated P121.8 billion to scams over the past year, and that 84 percent of Filipino adults encountered at least one scam attempt in the past 12 months, up from 77 percent in 2025.

He spoke at the Philippine launch of Scam Ready ASEAN, a training program led by the Bank Marketing Association of the Philippines (BMAP) with the ASEAN Foundation and Google.org, in collaboration with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The program aims to reach one million people in the country and train 2,000 master trainers, with a localized Scam Ready game targeted for release around December to January. BMAP also launched an industry campaign that urges people to verify links, messages, and payment requests before acting on them (Philstar).

For anyone sending money from a phone, the practical lesson is simple. Once an e-wallet transfer goes through, it is very hard to undo. Pause before paying anyone who contacted you first, double-check the recipient through a separate channel, and report a suspected scam to your e-wallet provider right away, because speed gives you the best chance of getting funds frozen.