Manila, July 14 -- In the past few days, local traditional banks have started removing transfer fees, a move widely welcomed by consumers who have long lamented the fees that cost up to PHP20 per transaction.

It is easy to assume that digital wallets or e-wallets should follow suit. After all, wouldn't zero fees across the board be the most consumer-friendly outcome? Yet this assumption overlooks a major difference: wallets and banks are not built the same way, and treating them as identical risks undermining the very institutions that first brought millions of Filipinos into digital finance.

The Philippine story is different from the countries often cited as models of zero fee transfers. In markets like Thailand or India, banking pene...