What is GCash Invest or GInvest - Thrifty Hustler (2024)

If you’re new to investing and if you’re thinking of investing a portion of your hard-earned money to help it grow then check out the GCash Invest or GInvest feature on your GCash app.

If you don’t have a GCash app yet, I suggest that you check out the previous articles that I’ve written about it:

• GCash Philippines Review 2021 – How to Open an Account with GCash
• How to Cash In and Cash-Out Using Your GCash Wallet
• What is GSave and Why Open an Account?

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

What is GCash Invest or GInvest?

GCash Invest or GInvest is an investment feature of GCash in partnership with ATRAM Trust Corporation. ATRAM Trust is the first stand-alone trust corporation in the Philippines and they have received their license to operate from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas last October 2016.

ATRAM Trust is the one that has provided and they are also the one that manages the funds that you can see in GInvest.

How to Start Investing with GInvest?

Once have a fully-verified GCash account, all you have to do is to click on GInvest. It does not appear on the homepage, you have to click on ‘Show More’ first and scroll down to ‘Financial Services’, and there you’ll see GInvest. Click on GInvest to start the Risk Profile Assessment.

Just click on ‘Proceed’ to go to the next page.

Answer the questionnaire provided. These are the Risk Assessment questions that will assess your risk appetite.

Surprisingly, my risk appetite turned out to be ‘Moderately Aggressive’ which means I’m not qualified for the meantime to invest in other available funds except the ATRAM Peso Money Market Fund.

It does say though on the ‘Help’ section that I will still be able to invest in funds with higher or lower risk classification compared to my risk profile.

However, whenever I try to click on the other funds, a pop-up box appears saying, “This investment product will be available to you soon. Stay tuned!”

I will probably try this again in the next few days to see if the other options will be available to my GInvest account soon.

How to Invest in Your Chosen Fund

Since I can only access the ATRAM Peso Money Market Fund, this will be the only example that I can give here for the time being.

To invest in it, all you have to do is to click on your chosen fund to read some information about it. Once you have decided, just click on ‘Buy’.

Once you click on ‘Buy, you’ll be asked to accept the ‘Participation Trust Agreement’, Key Information Investment Disclosure Statement’, and the ‘Risk Disclosure Statement’.

Afterward, you can input the amount that you want to invest. The minimum amount to invest is P50.

Once you’ve placed your order, you will receive an SMS confirming your order and it will appear temporarily as ‘Pending’ in your GInvest account.

Why I Invested

I invested just to try it and at the same time while waiting for the other funds to become available in my account.

I’m actually more interested in one of their funds which is theATRAM Global Technology Feeder Fund, which gives me the chance to invest in some of the best performing tech companies. I will update this post once this fund becomes available in my GInvest account.

ATRAM Peso Money Market’s past 1-year return which was shown on the app is at 0.68%. This is definitely way higher compared to the traditional banks. However, this return is way too small if you compare it to digital banks including to GSave which has a2.6% per annum interest rate as of the time of writing.

To be honest, it’s a better option for me to put my money instead on digital banks such as GSave instead of the Peso Money Market Fund. However, as I have mentioned above, I only invested to try it out while waiting for the activation of the other funds.

Advantages of Investing in GInvest

Ease of Use

Ease of use is probably the best advantage of investing via GInvest. The process is very straightforward and it’s very convenient since this is part of your GCash E-wallet.

No Fees

As of the time of writing, investing in GInvest does not have any fees. I don’t know if it will change in the future, but just to be sure, always check GCash’s websiteto keep yourself updated with any changes.

Multiple Options for Investment Funds

As of the time being, there are five available investment products in the app (although only one is available for me now). I’m sure that there will be some more that will be added in the future.

Disadvantage of Investing in GInvest

As of now, the only fund that I have access to is the Peso Money Market Fund which has an annual return of 0.68% last year (as shown in the app) and I think that this is very low considering that in the same app (GCash), you can access GSave and just park your money there for a much higher interest.

I don’t see any other disadvantages as of now but I will keep you posted if ever I notice any.

Final Thoughts

GInvest is one the easiest way to start investing in the Philippines. Although the Peso Money Market Fund is not the best option for me, I think there’s potential to earn much more in their other funds (for higher risks appetite investors).

Again, just a reminder, please note that this is not a piece of financial advice. Please consult a financial adviser and always do your own due diligence before making any financial investments.Thanks!

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