Finance
Philippine finance app allows transfers from US banks to GCash accounts
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GCash, the Philippines’ leading finance app and largest cashless ecosystem, brought the spirit of Filipino independence to overseas communities this month. From the vibrant streets of New York City to the sun-kissed shores of California and the cosmopolitan hub of Dubai, GCash connected with Filipino communities to celebrate a mutual heritage and foster stronger ties with the Philippines.
GCash took part in Philippine Independence Day celebrations in New York City, California and Dubai, where it shared important new developments that aim to make digital financial services more accessible and efficient for Filipinos living and working outside their home country.
“At GCash, when we say that ‘finance for all’ is our vision, it means we are driven to go beyond the Philippines and reach as many Filipinos as we can around the globe,” says Paul Albano, general manager, GCash International. “We are honoured to join our community in this distinctly Filipino celebration, and we’re eager to share all the ways GCash has been continuously innovating and enhancing our services to meet the needs of our kababayan [fellow Filipinos] overseas.”
As GCash continues to expand its reach, Filipinos worldwide can look forward to more responsive services, greater financial empowerment and connectivity – bridging the gap between continents and reinforcing the bonds of community and culture.
Coast-to-coast celebrations
This year’s Philippine Independence Day celebrations in the US – marking 126 years of liberation – included a June 2 parade in New York City – the largest outside the Philippines. The Philippine Independence Day Council Inc. (PIDCI), a non-profit umbrella organisation of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations up and down the US East Coast, hosted the event. Now in its 34th year, the parade has grown to become an annual celebration of Filipino culture and a display of national pride, strengthening familial and community ties.
At a booth set up during a street fair in New York City celebrating independence, GCash showcased its partnerships with financial institutions such as Meridian, an instant payment technology company headquartered in New York. The collaboration effectively synergises US-based financial services and the mobile wallets that have become part of daily life across the Philippines.
On June 8, over on the US West Coast, the city of Carson, California held a day of festivities for its own Philippine Independence Day celebrations. The community event, held at Veterans Park, featured food booths, a parade and cultural presentations – all showcasing Filipino culture, as well as offering individuals the opportunity to come together with family and friends.
GCash also set up booths to share the latest updates about its financial services, including its international expansion and its position as a seamless digital financial solution for Filipinos overseas. The app is now available for download in the US using a US mobile phone number. Cashing in and sending money have been made easier and more convenient through direct cash-ins.
Collaboration enables international transfers
GCash’s partnership with Meridian has enabled the direct in-app transfer of American-based user funds from more than 12,000 banks to GCash accounts. Upon cash-ins, which come with a US$1 fee per transaction, the service automatically converts dollar amounts into Philippine pesos, with competitive foreign exchange rates.
“At GCash, we want to help with the most important thing for our countrymen abroad: how they can care for their families and maintain connections with their loved ones despite the distance,” Albano says. “With GCash’s international expansion, this is exactly what we are doing. We’re making it possible for Filipinos overseas to take better control of their finances, and sending money to the Philippines is more convenient with our competitive rates.”
Celebrating Philippine-UAE partnerships
In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Filipino community gathered at the Independence Day celebrations held at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The event, which featured cultural presentations and tributes to Filipino traditions, celebrated the continuous contributions of overseas Filipinos towards nation-building efforts between the two countries. It also honoured 50 years of diplomatic relations between the UAE and the Philippines.
At the event’s bazaar, GCash showcased its global expansion efforts to Filipinos who have made a second home in the UAE, sharing its latest innovations that aim to empower members of the Filipino community working overseas by giving them more control of their finances via the app.
International expansion to reach millions of Filipinos overseas
GCash announced in March that it has expanded its international reach and fully launched its global push following approval from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, in 14 territories. Users in the US, Canada, Italy, the UK, Australia, Japan, the UAE, Qatar, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Spain, Germany and Singapore can now use international mobile numbers to sign up for the GCash app. Approval for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is expected to follow in the second half of this year.
With its expansion outside the Philippines, GCash is able to serve and empower more Filipinos, wherever they may be based. In addition to free real-time money transfers between GCash wallets for convenient access to funds, as well as the ability to buy prepaid credits for loved ones back home, GCash users abroad can now directly pay their bills, including utilities, tuition fees and government bills such as taxes, as well as making payments to more than 1,900 Philippine merchants.
To access GCash outside the Philippines, users with an active international SIM card can download the app from Google Play, App Store or Huawei AppGallery.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
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