GInvest: Is it worth it trying?
Learning how to invest is probably one of the most important skills a person should have in the world right now. Investing ensures the present as well as the future financial security of an individual. It allows a person’s wealth to grow through returns in the form of interest and dividends and through capital appreciation, in terms of company stocks or bonds.
As an accounting student, I learned that idle cash should be put to work for it to grow. That’s the time I started to get interested in making money. I browsed the internet to find ways on what should I do with the idle cash that I have and luckily, I found this investing feature of the GCash application, called GInvest.
What is GCash?
GCash is a Philippine mobile wallet used for different kinds of services including mobile payments and branchless banking. It was introduced in the year 2004 and it is owned by Mynt, (formerly Globe Fintech Innovations), which is a joint venture between Ant Group, Ayala Group of Companies, Globe Telecom.
Can I use the GCash Application overseas?
Fortunately, yes! You can still use GCash overseas as long as you have an active Philippines mobile number, however, make sure that your sim or phone number has activated Roaming.
What is GInvest?
GInvest is a feature of the GCash app where you can invest in the different investment funds from GCash’s partner product providers.
According to YugaTech, GInvest is powered by partnerships with Seedbox Philippines and ATRAM. ATRAM Trust provides and manages the funds available in GCash Invest Money. As per GCash, investing on GCash has 0 fees. There are no fees to be charged from investments everytime users transact. There are also no minimum holding periods.
As of the moment, these are the investment products available in the application:
ATRAM Peso Money Market Fund
ATRAM Total Return Peso Bond Fund
ATRAM Philippine Equity Smart Index Fund
ATRAM Global Technology Feeder Fund
ATRAM Global Consumer Trends Feeder Fund
ALFM Global Multi-Asset Income Fund Inc – PHP
Philippine Stock Index Fund (Units)
Refer to the photos below for the full description of the investment products
How does it work?
According to GCash, investment funds are pools of money from various investors who agree to invest collectively by entrusting their money to a professional fund manager, who invests the money in different financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.
The good thing about this feature is that you can start investing for as low as Php 50, which is approximately $1.
How to get started?
Gcash users qualified for GInvest should meet the following requirements:
1. At least 18 years old
2. A fully verified gcash account (here's a link for the full guide)
3. Not tagged as a Power Pay Plus account (payroll)
After having your GCash account fully verified, you need to set up your GInvest first before you can start investing. Here’s the link for the full guide.
My experience using GInvest
From a personal point of view, I think GInvest is a good way to invest your idle cash since you only need a small amount of money to start investing. However, if you’re like me that has only a starting capital of Php 3,000.00, you’ll probably won’t notice any increase at all. Using the GInvest is still a gamble. Risks are present and if you’re not careful with your decisions, you may still lose your money.
Looking at this experience in another perspective, I think this is a good way for people, especially those who are new to investing, to learn how investing really works. Months or years from now, I’m planning to invest in a more advanced field like in the stock market and with the knowledge and experience I’ve acquired in GInvest, I think I’ll be fine once I started investing there.
To know more about Gcash and Ginvest, you can visit the links below
https://help.gcash.com/hc/en-us/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=Ginvest
Disclaimer: I’m not promoting the said application; I’m only sharing my knowledge and experience in using GInvest.
Happy Investing everyone!
I have some savings in my Gcash right now and I'm planning on investing. I think GInvest isn't that complicated for beginners like me