How to accept GCash on your online store without a payment gateway

Two ways to take GCash

When you ask how to accept GCash online, you often get pointed to a gateway. Gateways work. They also charge you on every payment. Your own QR is the other way, and it asks something different of you.

Way one: a payment gateway

A gateway sits between your buyer and your account. The buyer pays the gateway. The gateway tells your store the payment went through, then sends the money on to you.

That automatic confirmation is the good part. You don’t open an app to check each order. Take App, a store builder, says wallet payments confirm automatically through gateways like Xendit, HitPay or PayPal. That is the vendor’s own claim.

The cost is a fee on each payment. Two examples, read on their own pages on 9 October 2026:

• PayMongo lists GCash at 2.23%. It says all its prices are exclusive of VAT.
• HitPay lists GCash at 2.3% for online payments and 2% in person, with no setup or monthly fees. HitPay’s page doesn’t say whether VAT is included, so the two rates are not directly comparable.

On a PHP 1,000 order, 2.23% comes to PHP 22.30 before VAT. That is simple arithmetic, not a quote from PayMongo.

Some gateways add other charges too. PayMongo, for example, lists PHP 10 per payout transfer. Rates change, so read the gateway’s own page before you decide.

Way two: your own QR

Here the buyer scans your QR in their own app and pays you directly. There is no gateway in the middle, so there is no gateway fee. Your bank or e-wallet still has its own rules and limits, so check those in your app.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas set a national QR standard called QR Ph. It requires participating banks and e-wallets to adopt it, and it runs on InstaPay. In the BSP’s own example, the payer only needs to make sure both banks or e-wallets are InstaPay participants.

The catch: nobody confirms the payment for you. You do.

Check the money before you confirm

A screenshot is only a picture, and a picture is easy to fake. In July 2025, GCash warned about fake receipts made with AI. It told people to always verify transactions within the GCash app itself, and to avoid relying solely on screenshots sent by others. A payment that is not in the app’s history should not be considered valid.

So your routine is short:

1. Get the buyer’s screenshot.
2. Open your GCash app and go to the Transactions tab.
3. Find the payment and check that the amount matches the order.
4. Confirm the order only after you see it.

If the payment isn’t there, don’t confirm. Ask the buyer to check their payment, and wait until you can see it. If your QR is tied to a bank account, do the same check in your bank app.

Where Zarii fits

If you choose your own QR, Zarii looks after the order side.

• You upload your QR once. Zarii shows it to the buyer exactly as you uploaded it, with the exact amount and an order code.
• The buyer needs no account.
• The buyer sends a screenshot.
• You check your account, then tap Confirm in your admin. Only then does your stock go down, once.

Zarii never holds the money. The buyer pays your QR, straight to your account, so Zarii is not a payment method and not a gateway. It also can’t tell whether a screenshot is real. That check is yours. There are no platform fees.

Your AI can’t confirm a payment either. If you run your store from a chat, read how to run your store from ChatGPT or Claude to see what it can and can’t do.

Which way fits you

A gateway fits if you want payments confirmed without you looking, and the fee on each payment is fine with you.

Your own QR fits if you would rather keep that fee and don’t mind checking each payment yourself. With a few orders a day, that is a quick check each time. With many orders, the checking adds up. That is the real cost of this way.

If most of your orders start in a chat, see selling on Messenger. If you are weighing a bigger store builder, note that Shopify says Shopify Payments isn’t supported in the Philippines, so GCash there goes through a third-party provider. Zarii vs Shopify goes through the rest.