Best Digital Bank Philippines (2026): Tonik vs Maya vs GoTyme vs MariBank vs CIMB

A USD-backed venture round used to be the only reason a Philippine digital bank existed. That changed on May 13, 2026, when Tonik Digital Bank reported consolidated positive cash net income for Q1 2026, the first standalone PH digital bank to fund itself from operations rather than parent-company subsidy. BusinessWorld put the run-rate above USD 60M with a USD 110M loan book, which kills the “is Tonik dying?” objection that has haunted every listicle since the 2022 layoffs.

It also explains what happened next, and no listicle has caught up with it. A bank that funds itself from net interest margin prices deposits off its loan book, not off a growth target. Tonik has now cut its whole time-deposit ladder twice in three weeks: 8.0% until May 20, 6.5% from May 20, and 5.5% from June 5, 2026. The rest of the market moved with it. CIMB reset MaxSave on June 1 and quietly discontinued its 24-month tenor in April; GSave inside GCash dropped from 2.60% to 2.30% on June 1; Maya cut its base to 3.0% on April 1. Every rate in this guide is now read live from our deposit-rate ledger, so it cannot silently rot the way the 8% headline did.

The five-bank comparison

The five names that matter for an expat or a local with PHP 50k to PHP 2M of parked savings: Tonik, Maya Bank, GoTyme, MariBank, CIMB. All BSP-licensed. All covered by PDIC up to PHP 1 million per depositor per bank since the March 15, 2025 ceiling increase. Park more than that and you split across two banks, or you accept an uninsured slice.

Rates live in the table further down, because they move faster than prose does. What does not move month to month is the shape of each bank: who can open an account, what the money is actually for, and where the friction sits.

Only one of these five is standing on its own balance sheet. Maya rides PLDT, Voyager and Smart. MariBank is owned by Sea Group. GoTyme is a JV between Gokongwei’s Robinsons Land and South Africa’s Tyme. CIMB is the digital arm of CIMB Group Malaysia. Tonik has no payments, telco, retail or banking platform feeding it customers, which is exactly why the Insignia VC writeup framed its Q1 profitability as the harder version of the trick.

Want to see the rate history and the sourcing behind every figure below? The methodology page documents how each rate is captured and re-verified, and the dataset catalogue publishes the underlying series. The PHP Savings Real-Return calculator ranks the post-tax rates and works out the PDIC split for your amount.

Tonik — still the leader, and cheaper than it was

Tonik’s rate sheet is the cleanest in the market. No tier games, no mission unlocks, no minimum-balance traps. It is also 250 basis points lower than the spring headline, and the reprice happened in two steps that most comparison pages missed entirely.

The Tonik rate page now publishes an old-rate / new-rate table with the new column headed “effective June 5, 2026 onwards”. The old column reproduces the ladder we captured on May 20 exactly, which is a rare gift: it proves both that our May capture was right and that it has been superseded. If you remember 8%, that number died on May 20. If you remember 6.5%, that one died on June 5.

Within Tonik, the 12-month tenor is still the sweet spot. Going out to 18 or 24 months earns less, because the curve inverts past a year and Tonik wants 12-month money. Each TD caps at PHP 250,000 and you can run five concurrently, so the ceiling is PHP 1.25 million across the ladder. Open one each quarter and you have a rolling redemption stream.

The honest tradeoff: pre-termination wipes the gain. Break a Tonik TD before maturity and the interest forfeits in full, closer to a Big-4 bank’s punitive schedule than a soft penalty. A 12-month placement is functionally locked. If you will need the cash inside the year, Solo Stash at 4.0% is the safer parking spot even though it gives up 150 basis points of gross yield.

Post-tax math on a PHP 250,000 12-month TD at the June 5 rate: 5.5% gross is PHP 13,750 of interest, less the 20% CMEPA withholding, so PHP 11,000 net. That is an effective 4.4% APY. On the old 8% sheet the same placement netted PHP 16,000, so the two cuts have cost that PHP 250k slot PHP 5,000 a year. It is still the best unconditional post-tax rate on this page, and the gap to everything else is now small enough that the lock-up has to earn its keep.

The time-deposit guide is the deeper piece on laddering across the whole market, including the Big-4 rows in the table above. This article’s job is the bank-by-bank picture and the foreigner-KYC path.

Maya Bank — the boost is the trap

Maya cut its base savings rate from 3.5% to 3% p.a. (gross) on April 1, 2026, confirmed on the Maya high-interest savings page. The boost system stayed, and it is the most misunderstood number in Philippine consumer banking.

Maya’s own page is explicit about the two limits: “Bonus interest applies to your deposit balance of up to ₱100,000”, and the boost is earned month by month through qualifying in-app activity, with tiers running from PHP 250 of qualified spend up to PHP 35,000. The 15% headline is the top rung of a promo window that Maya currently dates 1–31 July 2026. It is a monthly campaign, not a rate sheet, which is why our deposit-rate ledger records Maya’s dependable 3.0% base and deliberately excludes the boost.

Run it on a real balance. Park PHP 500,000 in Maya and hit every mission to unlock the full 15%: only PHP 100,000 earns the boost (PHP 15,000/year gross), and PHP 400,000 earns the 3.0% base (PHP 12,000/year gross). Blended pre-tax APY: 5.4%. After the 20% CMEPA withholding: 4.32%.

Here is what changed in June. Against Tonik’s old 6.5% TD, that blended Maya figure was not close. Against 5.5% (4.4% post-tax), Maya’s fully-boosted blend now lands 8 basis points behind, on a PHP 500k balance, with monthly missions attached. The mission chore now buys you nothing versus a TD you can open once and forget. Push the balance to PHP 1M and the boost dilutes further.

The “15% Maya” headline is real only for someone parking exactly PHP 100,000 who already spends heavily through the app each month. That is a small population, and it is not the parked-cash crowd.

Maya’s redeeming feature is the wallet-to-bank flow. Sweep from Maya Wallet to Maya Bank and the balance starts earning the savings rate immediately. That is still a useful pattern for cash cycling through bill payments.

GoTyme: the foreigner-KYC winner, and a rate we will not quote

For any foreigner in Cebu without a PH-issued government ID, GoTyme is the best entry into the digital-banking stack. The kiosks are the whole differentiator. GoTyme announced a Moalboal kiosk at Gaisano Grand Mall in October 2025, adding to its SM City Cebu and La Nueva Supermart Mandaue (MC Briones) presence. At a kiosk, staff handle face capture and ID scanning in person: passport plus ACR-I clears verification on the spot, and you walk out with a printed Visa debit card.

That sidesteps the single most common foreigner onboarding failure, which is an automated ID matcher rejecting a foreign passport because it expects a PhilSys card or a Philippine driver’s licence. Maya Bank and Tonik onboarding flows hit that wall constantly. GoTyme does not, because a human at the counter overrides it.

Rate aside, the argument for GoTyme is unchanged: a flat rate on the entire balance with no tiers and no missions, plus the only in-person path in Cebu. If the alternative is no digital account at all because the app keeps failing, that is the whole ballgame. For the wider account-opening picture across the Big 4 plus digital, see the open bank account in Cebu guide for foreigners.

MariBank: name the rebrand

SeaBank Philippines completed its rebrand to MariBank Philippines Inc. in 2025, aligning with parent Sea Group’s MariBank brand, as reported by Philstar (a named secondary, not a MariBank filing). Same BSP licence, same PDIC coverage, same Sea and Shopee ownership. Existing deposits and account numbers transitioned automatically.

On rates, MariBank’s own savings page publishes 3.25% per annum on balances up to PHP 1 million and up to 3.75% above PHP 1 million. It prints no effective date next to those tiers, so we do not attach one, and we do not repeat the “cut on January 15” line that circulates without a source. The tier break tells you who MariBank is competing for: larger balances. At that size, Tonik’s TD ladder (PHP 1.25M ceiling across five TDs) still beats it, by a margin the table above will keep honest.

MariBank’s own time deposit is a 3-month upfront product, and it is one of the rows our July 2026 sweep could not re-verify at the issuer’s site. The table marks it unverified rather than refreshing it from a comparison site.

The Shopee integration is the soft argument for MariBank: auto-deposit from Shopee seller earnings, in-app voucher rebates. If you run a Shopee store, the workflow matters. If you just want a savings rail, MariBank is the third or fourth pick.

CIMB: the four-product maze

CIMB Bank Philippines runs four overlapping savings products and they are easy to confuse:

• UpSave: 2.5% per annum per CIMB’s own FAQ, no minimum balance, opened directly with CIMB. The FAQ carries no effective date.
• GSave: 2.3% p.a. (gross) base, opened inside the GCash app, deposits held at CIMB. CIMB cut it from 2.60% effective June 1, 2026, the same day it reset MaxSave. Periodic “Earn More” promo windows lift it above the base for limited periods; the base is what you can plan on.
• CIMB Grow: invite-only inside GCash, aimed at active savers. CIMB does not publish a dated rate sheet for it that we could fetch, so we do not quote one. The figures floating around comparison sites are not sourceable to CIMB.
• CIMB Prime: cut to 3.50% per annum from 4.00%, effective March 28, 2026, and it requires you to “maintain a Total Relationship Balance (TRB) of at least PHP 1,000,000 in total deposits with the Bank for all three (3) months of the preceding quarter”. Fall short and you revert to the standard tiers.

MaxSave, CIMB’s time deposit, repriced on June 1, 2026 and is in the ledger table above, with the Prime tier as its upper band. The 24-month tenor was discontinued on April 14, 2026 and is no longer offered to new placements, which quietly removed the long end of CIMB’s curve while nobody was looking.

CIMB does publicise an award heavily on its rate-page banners, and it is worth naming correctly, because the citation circulating in comparison posts is wrong. CIMB announced on its own newsroom that it was named Best Digital Bank Philippines 2026 by the Global Banking & Finance Review Awards, a UK-based recognition platform. Not Asiamoney, which is the attribution several listicles (and an earlier version of this page) gave it. Either way the award does not translate into a better consumer rate sheet: Tonik’s 12-month TD beats every unconditional CIMB rate including the Prime MaxSave tier, and Prime’s PHP 1M maintaining balance crowds out smaller savers entirely.

The realistic CIMB use case is GSave inside GCash as a sweep destination. Pair it with a GCash foreigner account and let idle wallet balance earn something instead of nothing. Note the wallet balance itself is e-money and not PDIC-covered; only the GSave deposit, which sits at CIMB, is. The GCash fee breakdown covers what it costs to get money in and out of the wallet in the first place, which after the July 2026 repricing is a different question than it was in June.

Foreigner KYC: what actually works

The five banks differ sharply on whether they will let a foreigner open an account at all, and on which ID combination clears.

A 9(a) tourist visa with an ACR-I from a 60+ day stay is enough at GoTyme’s kiosks. Maya and Tonik will keep failing until you hold a PhilSys card, a Philippine driver’s licence, or a UMID, all of which need a longer-term visa (13a, SRRV, work, or student). The path is documented in the open bank account walkthrough.

For the GCash-route savers, the GCash foreigner KYC and account limits guide covers the accepted IDs and the wallet tiers that gate GSave access.

The MP2 footnote — why no digital bank wins on tax-adjusted yield

CMEPA killed the favoured-deposit tax exemption in mid-2025. Every bank rate on this page is pre-tax, and 20% comes off at source. Tonik’s 12-month TD is 4.4% post-tax. Maya’s headline 15% on the first PHP 100k is 12% post-tax, and only on that PHP 100k.

Pag-IBIG MP2 sits outside that regime. Its FY2025 dividend was 7.12% per annum, a record, and the declaration was reported alongside confirmation that Pag-IBIG dividends stay tax-exempt under the Pag-IBIG Fund Law, untouched by CMEPA. Post-tax, 7.12% MP2 beats every bank on this page for cash you can lock up for the five-year MP2 term.

The gap widened in June. It was 192 basis points against Tonik’s old 6.5% TD. It is now 272 basis points: 7.12% tax-free against 4.4% post-tax, on money you are locking up either way. Note that MP2’s dividend is declared annually and is not a contracted rate, so it is a trailing figure, not a promise. The FY2026 declaration lands in Q1 2027 and could be lower.

The catch: MP2 requires Pag-IBIG membership. Foreigners need PH employment or self-employment registered through SSS/Pag-IBIG to qualify. For an SRRV retiree with no PH income, MP2 is closed and Tonik’s TD ladder is the best available post-tax instrument. For a foreigner on a work visa with Pag-IBIG contributions, splitting between MP2 (long-term, tax-free) and a Tonik TD (12-month, liquid-ish, 4.4% post-tax) optimises around CMEPA cleanly. The high-yield savings guide works the full split-allocation math.

How to pick — by scenario

Parked cash above PHP 100,000, no monthly app activity. Tonik. Solo Stash at 4.0% if you need liquidity, the 12-month TD if you can lock up. The Maya boost ceiling makes its headline meaningless above PHP 100k.

Freelancer with weekly Payoneer or Wise inflows. GoTyme for the debit card and the Cebu kiosks; sweep idle balance to Tonik Solo Stash. Watch the inbound cost, not the deposit rate: the Payoneer withdrawal-fee breakdown matters more to your annual take than half a point of savings yield.

SRRV or 13a retiree without PH employment. The Tonik TD ladder is the post-tax winner. MP2 is closed without Pag-IBIG contributions. Foreigner KYC may need PhilSys before Tonik onboarding clears; if it does not clear, GoTyme kiosk first, add Tonik later.

Foreigner on 9(a) tourist with ACR-I, no PH-issued ID yet. GoTyme kiosk at SM City Cebu, La Nueva Mandaue, or Gaisano Moalboal. Skip the others until you hold a PH ID. The kiosk path is the only one that will not reject a foreign passport.

Active Shopee seller. MariBank for the auto-deposit, Tonik for parked cash. Do not pretend MariBank’s 3.25–3.75% is competitive on rate: it is an integration play, not a yield play.

Already deep in GCash, want passive yield without a new app. CIMB GSave inside GCash. Lower yield, zero friction. Step up to Tonik when the balance crosses PHP 100k and the rate gap starts to matter.

The withdrawal rail — and the fee that just collapsed

A high APY only matters if the money moves out cheaply, and this is where 2026 quietly rewrote the rulebook.

All five digital banks send through InstaPay, which BSP defines as a real-time credit-push scheme for transfers up to PHP 50,000 per transaction. That cap has not moved. What moved is the price.

Through mid-2026, most articles (including an earlier version of this one) said InstaPay costs roughly PHP 8 to PHP 25 depending on the bank, and that a receiving bank might charge you too. Both halves are now wrong. BSP Circular No. 1238 (Monetary Board Resolution No. 498, dated June 4, 2026) amended the retail-payments framework in principles-based terms, and it provides that “recipients shall receive the full amount as credit to their accounts, free of any charges or deductions”. The receiving side is not where the fee lives. The circular also contains no peso figure and no cap: it does not set a price, it sets a pricing standard, and institutions then repriced individually across the first two weeks of July.

The result, from BSP’s own fee-disclosure sheet dated 10 July 2026:

• Sending from BDO: free (BDO, individual send) (from 09 Jul 2026; BSP fee disclosure, 10 Jul 2026)
• Sending from BPI: free (BPI, individual send) (from 01 Jul 2026; BSP fee disclosure, 10 Jul 2026)
• Sending from Metrobank: free (Metrobank, individual send) (from 09 Jul 2026; BSP fee disclosure, 10 Jul 2026)
• Sending from GCash: ₱10 (GCash, individual send) (from 04 Jul 2026; BSP fee disclosure, 10 Jul 2026)
• Sending from Maya Bank: ₱10 (Maya Bank, individual send) (from 10 Jul 2026; BSP fee disclosure, 10 Jul 2026)

Most large banks now charge individuals nothing at all for an InstaPay send. On the same BSP sheet, Tonik is disclosed at PHP 8, GoTyme gives 20 free transfers a month then charges PHP 9, and CIMB gives the first two free then PHP 10. Those three are not yet in our fee ledger, so treat them as sheet figures with a 10 July 2026 stamp rather than as live quotes: this is a moving target, several disclosed effectivity dates fall after that snapshot, and any page telling you “InstaPay costs PHP 15” is describing June.

Withdrawing PHP 500,000 in a day still means ten InstaPay pulls because of the PHP 50,000 cap, but at PHP 0 per pull from a big bank the old argument for batching it through PESONet has mostly evaporated. PESONet remains the batch rail: business-day only, same-day settlement if initiated before the cut-off, no per-transaction ceiling. Use it for size, not for savings.

The real trap is not the fee. It is Tonik’s TD pre-termination: break a 12-month TD early and all accrued interest forfeits, and the principal lands back in Solo Stash. A PHP 250,000 TD broken at month 11 returns exactly PHP 250,000, against the PHP 261,000 you would bank at maturity after withholding. Plan the ladder so at least one TD redeems every quarter, or keep the emergency cash in Solo Stash where it stays liquid.

Maya Bank withdrawals also route back through the Maya Wallet before going out on InstaPay. The sweep is instant, but the two-step has tripped people in a panic. Practise it on a small balance before parking serious money. GoTyme and MariBank push InstaPay straight from the savings balance with no sweep step; CIMB GSave exits through the GCash wallet, the same two-step as Maya.

The close

Tonik still wins 2026, on a much thinner margin than the spring headlines suggested, and for a reason worth understanding: it cut because it is now funding itself from net interest margin instead of equity rounds, which is what a real bank does. Its 4.4% post-tax 12-month yield still beats every unconditional rate the other four publish. Maya remains useful for people who genuinely run its missions each month, though at PHP 500k the fully-boosted blend now lands fractionally behind a Tonik TD that asks nothing of you. GoTyme stays the best foreigner-KYC entry in Cebu. MariBank and CIMB are integration plays for people already deep in Shopee or GCash.

The boring outcome: most expats parking serious money in 2026 should hold a Tonik TD ladder plus a GoTyme debit card, route monthly cash through GCash for utilities and merchants, and ignore the Maya 15% headline unless they are already running the missions. The interesting outcome is that for the first time, a PH digital bank’s rate sheet looks sustainable past the next funding round, and the deposit market repriced down to prove it.

For how this fits the broader Philippines tax picture, particularly the 180-day residency rule that determines whether CMEPA’s 20% withholding reaches your worldwide income at all, see the foreigner tax in Cebu guide.