Load USD to your WISE $ account

Motivation

In my pursuit to find the cheapest way to pay for stuff online without getting ripped off by Forex

WISE is known to be the best platform to exchange currencies online, I am using it on my freelancing days.

So I audited my credit card transactions and realised that the exchange rates for my online purchases are so bad.

So I’m trying to look into the best way to avoid paying Forex spread as much as possible.

Create/Have a USD bank account. I opened mine from BPI. I loaded it up.
Is it worth it? For me, who is an avid reader and subscriber of macroeconomics, I know the power of the dollar. As long as they are the world reserve currency, it’s always worth it to have Dollars saved somewhere else. For example, at this moment when everyone’s fighting against high inflation, the dollar is so strong. If you have dollars from at least 2 years ago (May 10, 2021), you would be up by 16%, i.e., if you have $1000 two years ago, its value would be $1160 now.
Wait for two weeks to get your debit card.
Register it for online mobile banking.
Once linked to your BPI account, log in. Go to Other Services > Card Control > Look for this debit card > Enable e-commerce access for your debit
My International access seems to be enabled by default as well
Register for WISE
Answer questionnaires, answer KYC
Once approved, you should have an online USD account now
Click the USD Account, click Add money
Input amount, for me $40
Select Debit Card
Input your BPI Debit Card number, expiration and the CVV
It will show an embedded website where you have to put the OTP code you should receive on your phone. You would notice that BPI is saying it is requesting for $40.55 (maybe BPI fees as well?)

Voila you have $40 on your WISE account which you can use anywhere
As a tip, you can disable the E-commerce access on your BPI Debit Card inside the BPI mobile app if you will not use it again.

So to receive $40, I paid $42.41 for the fees on BPI. That’s 5.8488% on fees ????

Is it worth it? You do the math