MANILA, Philippines — One of the dreaded aspects of traveling abroad is finding the best deal for foreign exchange and buying those interesting food choices in convenience stores and souvenir items via cash.
Just like many Filipino international travelers, the husband-and-wife tandem of Megan Young and Mikael Daez recently flew to Japan and they found a way to make their shopping experience easier minus all the trouble of carrying around cash.
The sweet couple is known to love going to Japan, and their recent trip saw them buy quirky items. They saw funky grooming items, including a mini-ironing stick or "plantsa" for hair, which Mikael said was his.
Megan, meanwhile, enjoyed trying her luck with the claw machines. The couple also ended up buying their favorite Pokemon items.
Mikael quipped they were "nabudol" in Japan, but it was a convenient kind of "budol" because they had cashless transactions.
“One of the most common inconveniences when traveling to a foreign country is familiarizing yourself with the currency, and this is usually what leads to delays or misunderstandings and even the risk of overpaying," Mikael said.
Thus, they were happy to have discovered that GCash can now be used to pay in Japan via Alipay.
“We’ve gotten used to scanning to pay locally, but it’s really nice to now be able to pay with GCash when we visited some of our favorite places like Glico and BIC Camera, or when we checked out the new Gigo flagship,” added Megan.