Disbursements

Overview

PayMongo Disbursements is how you move money out of your PayMongo Wallet to destinations you choose: bank accounts, e-wallets, or other PayMongo Wallets. It is designed for any outbound flow where your business needs to pay someone — payroll, vendor settlements, contractor fees, refunds, rebates, incentives, or customer cash-outs.

Disbursements run on the same Transfers infrastructure that powers the rest of PayMongo's money movement layer, giving you one consistent API and Dashboard experience regardless of the rail you choose.

What you can do

• Send one-off transfers to a single recipient, or send to up to 1,000 recipients in a single batch.
• Route each transfer over the right rail — InstaPay for real-time, low-value payouts; PESONet for same- or next-banking-day bulk settlements.
• Pay or receive via QR Ph for person-to-person, person-to-merchant, or person-to-biller flows.
• Track status in real time through the Wallet Dashboard, webhooks, or callback URLs.
• Control authorization with email-based OTP confirmation on Dashboard-initiated transfers.

Supported rails

Pricing

• InstaPay and PESONet transfers have a standard rate of PHP 10.00 per transaction.
• Every account is entitled to one free transfer per week.
• Volume-based preferential rates are available. Contact your PayMongo account manager or [email protected] to request a custom rate.

Local disbursements

Local disbursements cover every outbound transfer within the Philippines. They move from your PayMongo Wallet to a receiving bank account, e-wallet, or another PayMongo Wallet using InstaPay, PESONet, or QR Ph.

Before you start

To initiate a local disbursement, make sure you have:

1. An activated PayMongo Wallet.
2. Sufficient balance to cover the transfer amount plus the PHP 10.00 fee per transaction.
3. Correct recipient details — bank or e-wallet name, account name, and account number. Mismatched names or invalid account numbers are the most common cause of failed transfers.
4. Access to the registered email associated with your account — Dashboard transfers require an email-delivered One-Time PIN (OTP).
5. If you plan to integrate programmatically, valid API keys for your environment (test mode and live mode).

Understanding the rails

InstaPay — instant, 24/7, lower limit

InstaPay is a real-time electronic fund transfer service between Philippine banks and e-wallets.

• Transactions are typically instant.
• Runs 24/7, including weekends and holidays.
• Hard cap of PHP 50,000 per transaction.
• If a transaction is stuck in a pending state, allow up to 20 minutes for the final status to reflect on your Dashboard or webhook.

Use InstaPay for single contractor payments, customer rebates, refunds, or any payout under PHP 50,000 that needs to arrive quickly.

PESONet — batch, scheduled, higher limit

PESONet is a batch-based electronic fund transfer service designed for higher-value or bulk transactions.

• Transactions are aggregated and settled in cycles on banking days.
• Hard cap of PHP 10,000,000 per transaction.
• Transactions initiated on non-banking days (weekends, holidays) are processed on the next banking day.

PESONet cycles:

Note: The receiving bank or e-wallet may apply its own internal schedule, so the exact time funds appear in the recipient's account can vary slightly from the cycle end.

Use PESONet for payroll runs, supplier batch payments, or any disbursement that exceeds InstaPay's PHP 50,000 limit.

Sending a transfer through the Dashboard

The PayMongo Dashboard is the fastest way to disburse funds without writing any code. You can send to a single recipient or process a batch of up to 1,000 transactions at once.

Single transfer

1. Log in to your PayMongo Dashboard.
2. Go to the Wallet Dashboard.
3. On the upper right, click Send Funds.
4. Fill in the recipient details — bank or e-wallet, account name, account number, and amount.
5. Click Continue, review the details, then click Submit.
6. Enter the OTP sent to your registered email to authorize the transfer.
7. Once submitted, the transaction appears in your Wallet transaction history.

Batch transfer

You can send to multiple recipients in one submission — useful for payroll, recurring vendor payouts, or commission disbursements.

1. From the Wallet landing page, click Send Funds.
2. Enter the details of your first transaction (recipient bank, account name, account number, amount) and click Add.
3. Repeat for each additional recipient. You can add up to 1,000 transactions in a single batch.
4. Review the list of all added transactions in the Transactions table.
5. Click Continue to proceed, or Cancel to clear the entire batch and start over.
6. Click Submit and enter the OTP to authorize the batch.

Batch rule — one network per batch: A single batch must use either InstaPay or PESONet, not both. If you have a mix, split them into two separate batches.

Sending a transfer through the API

For developers building automated disbursement workflows, transfers follow a simple pattern:

1. Retrieve the list of receiving institutions supported by the rail you want to use — either List All Receiving Institutions for the InstaPay set, or the PESONet-enabled set depending on your Wallet's capabilities.
2. Create the wallet transaction using Create a Wallet Transaction. Include the recipient's bank ID, account number, account name, amount, and description.
3. Track status either by:
   • Supplying a callback_url in the create request so PayMongo POSTs the final status to your endpoint, or
   • Polling Retrieve a Wallet Transaction by ID.

The same endpoint handles both InstaPay and PESONet — the rail is determined by the receiving institution you select and, where applicable, by the amount.

Test mode provides a simulated environment with no real fund movement so you can validate your integration end-to-end before going live.

Tracking disbursement status

Every transfer moves through one of three terminal or intermediate states:

Webhooks and callback URLs

Include a callback_url when creating a wallet transaction and PayMongo will POST the final status payload to your endpoint as soon as the status changes. This is the recommended way to keep your systems in sync without polling.

A typical status payload looks like this:

{
  "data": {
    "id": "wallet_tr_AYD5d5e5J2NsHL15zy4ord4V",
    "type": "wallet_transaction",
    "attributes": {
      "wallet_id": "wallet_Y1fYZhnbA4JAiQy24ARbXbTE",
      "amount": 100,
      "batch_transaction_id": null,
      "callback_url": "https://example.com/webhooks/paymongo",
      "currency": "PHP",
      "description": "This is a wallet transaction.",
      "fee": 0,
      "livemode": true,
      "net_amount": 100,
      "provider": "paymongo",
      "provider_error": null,
      "provider_error_code": null,
      "purpose": "Payroll disbursement",
      "receiver": {
        "bank_account_name": "Receiver Testmode",
        "bank_account_number": "516646818064",
        "bank_code": "PAEYPHM2XXX",
        "bank_id": "824",
        "bank_name": "PAYMONGO PAYMENTS, INC."
      },
      "reference_number": "X3veQ6EaqjUuQnsa3noU",
      "sender": { "...": "..." },
      "status": "succeeded",
      "type": "send_payment",
      "transfer_id": "tr_hn3hR2g7qYAZ6it23ptk5NqZ",
      "created_at": 1753947245,
      "updated_at": 1753947245
    }
  }
}

Key fields to watch:

• status — one of succeeded, pending, or failed.
• reference_number — use this when reconciling with the recipient's bank or raising a support ticket.
• provider_error and provider_error_code — populated on failure; use these to map to user-facing messages.
• transfer_id and batch_transaction_id — link individual wallet transactions back to the parent transfer and batch.

QR sending and receiving

QR-based transfers let you move money using QR Ph — the national standard for QR codes in the Philippines — without requiring the sender to know the recipient's account number.

Use cases

• Receive funds from other banks directly into your PayMongo Wallet by presenting a dynamic or static QR.
• Send funds to other banks by scanning the recipient's QR and deducting the amount from your PayMongo Wallet.
• Pay merchants by scanning a QR Ph standee or POS-generated code.
• Pay billers by scanning the accepted biller QR code printed on a statement of account.

Flow types

QR flows settle on the underlying EFT rail (typically InstaPay) so they inherit the same speed, limits, and pricing.

Integration notes

• If a scanned QR is missing mandatory fields, the API responds with the list of missing fields or values.
• Test mode simulates the full QR scan-to-settle flow for both sending and receiving.

Error handling

Failed transfers return an error code that you can surface back to your users. Errors fall into two broad groups: PayMongo-level errors (caused by your request or account state) and rail-level errors (returned by InstaPay or PESONet using ISO 20022 status codes).

Common PayMongo transfer errors

Rail-level (ISO 20022) errors

InstaPay and PESONet surface granular status codes when a transfer is rejected downstream. The most frequently seen ones:

For the complete ISO 20022 code list — including less common errors — see the API reference's Transfer Error Codes table. When surfacing errors to end users, translate the raw code into a friendly action message; the most frequent codes above cover the vast majority of real-world cases.

Retry guidance

• pending is not an error — give InstaPay up to 20 minutes and PESONet up to one banking day before taking action.
• failed transfers are generally safe to retry once the underlying cause (invalid account, insufficient funds, rate limit) is resolved.
• Never auto-retry without checking for AM05 / DU03 (duplicate) responses — your first attempt may have already succeeded.

Cross-border disbursements (coming soon)

Cross-border disbursements will let you send money out of the Philippines to international destinations via fiat and stablecoin rails.

This section is reserved. Scope, supported corridors, fees, timelines, and integration details are pending confirmation from the product team and will be published here ahead of launch.

Planned scope (subject to change):

• Outbound fiat rails to major corridors.
• Outbound stablecoin rails for programmatic global payouts.
• Unified API surface — same Transfers endpoints, with additional destination parameters.

If cross-border disbursement is on your roadmap and you would like to be notified when the capability opens in beta, reach out to your PayMongo account manager.

Related reading

• Wallets — how to fund the PayMongo Wallet that disbursements draw from.
• Ledgers and Workflows — how to automate disbursement logic, including scheduled transfers and splitting disbursements across destinations.
• Webhooks — how to configure reliable event delivery for transfer status updates.