‘Nabudol in Japan’: Megan Young, Mikael Daez find way to shop better abroad

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. 

Megan and Mikael paid their transactions through Alipay+. All they had to do was checkout if GCash is accepted as a payment method. They paid with their GCash app by scanning the QR code or generating their own generated code for the merchant to scan.

They were also happy to know about the GCash Card, which can be a big help if the phone dies, there is no data connection, or the store only accepts cards. 

Apart from Japan, GCash Global Pay via Scan QR is also in South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau in Asia as well as Qatar, the UAE, the USA, and destinations in Europe such as France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

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