Paying Your Filipino VA from the UK: A Practical Guide (2026)

The one thing to understand first

If you hire through PH Talents, you pay your virtual assistant directly. Not through us, not through an escrow, not through a platform wallet. You agree a rate with them, and every month the money goes from your bank to theirs. We charge our own fee separately and we are never in the payment chain between you.

That means the mechanics of paying someone in the Philippines are genuinely your mechanics to run. The good news is that they are simple once set up, and this guide covers the whole of it: how to send pounds and have pesos arrive, what to agree up front, what 13th month pay is and whether it applies to you, and where the tax responsibilities actually sit.

Getting pounds to pesos without feeding the banks

A traditional international bank transfer (SWIFT) is the worst common way to do this. You pay a flat sending fee, often an intermediary bank takes a slice in the middle, the exchange rate carries a hidden margin, and it can take days to arrive. For a monthly payment to the same person, there is no reason to accept any of that.

Money transfer services built for this — Wise, Remitly, WorldRemit and similar — move GBP to PHP cheaply and usually within hours. They can pay directly into a Philippine bank account, and most can also pay into GCash or Maya, the e-wallets that much of the Philippines runs on day to day. Your VA will have a strong preference about where their money should land; ask them, and use whichever service reaches that account well.

When you compare services, ignore the advertised fee and look at one number only: how many pesos arrive for the pounds you send. Some services charge a visible fee and give you a fair exchange rate; others advertise “no fees” and hide their margin in the rate. The pesos-that-arrive figure is the truth of it. It takes two minutes to compare and the difference compounds every month for as long as the engagement lasts.

Agree the rate in pesos, not pounds

You can fix the monthly rate in either currency, but somebody has to carry the exchange rate risk. Fix it in pounds and your cost is stable while your VA’s income swings with the rate — some months their rent is covered comfortably, some months it is not. Fix it in pesos and their income is stable while your cost drifts a little month to month.

We think the right answer is pesos, and it is how rates are quoted on PH Talents. A few pounds of variance is noise in a UK company’s payroll spend. The same variance in a household budget in Cebu is groceries. The professional whose income is predictable stays longer, and staying longer is worth far more to you than the variance costs.

Pay on a fixed date, and know the rhythm you are joining

Salaried work in the Philippines traditionally pays twice a month — the 15th and the end of the month, known locally as kinsenas and katapusan. Bills, school fees and family obligations are timed around those dates. Independent professionals working with overseas clients usually invoice monthly, and that is the common arrangement through PH Talents too: your VA raises an invoice at month end and you pay it on an agreed date.

Whatever cadence you agree, the date matters more than the frequency. A payment that lands reliably on the same day every month lets someone run their life around it. A payment that arrives “sometime that week” does not. Put the date in the agreement, set the transfer up as a recurring payment if your service supports it, and treat it with the same seriousness as your own payroll.

13th month pay: what it is and whether it applies to you

The 13th month is a Philippine institution: an extra month’s basic salary, required by law for employees, paid in December before the 24th. Every employed Filipino receives it, families plan Christmas around it, and it is as fixed a part of working life as payday itself.

Here is the honest legal position for you: the law requires it from employers, for employees. An independent professional you engage under a contract for services is not your employee, so there is no legal obligation on you to pay it. Plenty of UK companies stop reading there.

We would encourage you not to. A voluntary 13th month — a full extra month, or a defined bonus — is the single strongest retention gesture available to you, precisely because it speaks the local language of what good work arrangements look like. It converts a working relationship into one where your VA tells other excellent people that you are worth working for. If you offer it, write it into the agreement from the start so it is a promise rather than a December surprise; if you decide not to, be upfront about that too, so nobody is quietly hoping.

Tax: where the responsibilities actually sit

An independent professional in the Philippines is responsible for their own tax. They register with the BIR (the Philippine tax authority), declare what you pay them, and settle their own liabilities. You do not operate Philippine withholding, and because they are not your UK employee, you do not operate PAYE or National Insurance either. Their monthly invoice is simply a business expense for your company, like any other supplier.

Two honest caveats. First, contractor status depends on the reality of the arrangement, not the label on it — a genuine independent professional controls how they work and could take on other clients. The engagements PH Talents introduces are structured as contracts for services from the start, and we keep the paperwork consistent with that. Second, we are a talent agency, not your accountant: how the expense treats for VAT and corporation tax is a question for whoever does your books, and it is a short conversation.

The setup that works, in one list

Agree the rate in pesos. Pick a transfer service by comparing pesos-that-arrive, and send to the account your VA actually wants paid. Fix a payment date and never miss it. Decide about the 13th month in month one, not in December, and write down whatever you decide. Keep the monthly invoices. That is the entire system — ten minutes to set up, and from then on paying someone eight time zones away is no harder than paying anyone else.

Frequently asked questions