The Four-eyed Journal

The word is officially out, PayPal now allows Philippine-based users to withdraw funds directly into their local bank accounts. Woot! Big big props to PayPal!

I just received an email from them officially announcing the roll-out of such a service. You can now use PayPal to transfer money to Philippine banks. It’s free for transfers above PhP7000.00, with a transaction fee of PhP50.00 (~$1.23) for transfers Php6,999.00 and below. It’s definitely good news since it shaves off some time from the processing of withdrawals from PayPal, plus it makes the whole thing more convenient. I’m sure more Pinoys will sign-up for PayPal in the coming months.

Here’s an interesting story though, from Mike Abundo’s experience with UnionBank regarding the Bank code that is needed in order to add a local Philippine-based bank account to your Paypal.

Now, the bad news: UnionBank, with whom I opened an account for the express purpose of receiving PayPal funds through a UnionBank EON card, thinks their bank code is some sort of fucking top secret shit. I just got into a fight with one of their customer service agents over it. He questioned the need for a bank code on PayPal; I dared him to log on to his PayPal account and see for himself.

I do not appreciate being called a liar, especially by people who cannot see the obvious. Unless UnionBank gives me the information I need right now, they will lose some of my business. Interesting how they’ve turned from one of the smartest banks in the Philippines to one of the stupidest, all within the course of one Sunday. That’s what happens when your market is faster and smarter than you.

Strange really, because back when before I haven’t verified my PayPal account with my UnionBank EON card, their support agents have always been helpful whenever I called them up. All Mike Abundo wanted was the darn bank code, was it a top secret piece of information?

Luckily for me, I followed the link contained in PayPal’s legit email (there are tons of spam and fake emails from PayPal so be careful) and it brought me to their Bank Withdrawal FAQ Page. Read about the process of Adding a Bank account and to the left, buried in the middle of the explanatory note was a link to PayPal’s list of local RP banks’ codes. And right near the bottom of the list, is UnionBank’s bank code! So that spared me from making a phone call to UnionBank and possibly suffering the same fate as Mike Abundo did.

• ALLIED BANKING CORP - 010320013
• AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND - 010700015
• ASIA UNITED BANK - 011020011
• BANGKO SENTRAL NG PILIPINAS - 010030015
• BANGKOK BANK - 010670019
• BANK OF AMERICA - 010120019
• BANK OF CHINA - 011140014
• BANK OF TOKYO - 010460012
• BANCO DE ORO (& EPCIB) - 010530667
• BANK OF COMMERCE - 010440016
• BANK OF THE PHIL ISLANDS - 010040018
• CHINA BANKING CORP - 010100013
• CHINA TRUST COMML BANK - 010690015
• CITIBANK N.A. - 010070017
• DEVT BANK OF THE PHILS - 010590018
• DEUTSCHE BANK - 010650013
• EAST WEST BANK - 010620014
• EXPORT & INDUSTRY BANK - 010860010
• FUJI BANK - 010640010
• HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANK - 010060014
• INTL COMML BANK OF CHINA - 010560019
• INTL EXCHANGE BANK - 010680012
• JP MORGAN CHASE BANK - 010720011
• KOREA EXCHANGE BANK - 010710018
• INTL NEDERLAND BANK - 010660016
• LAND BANK OF THE PHILS - 010350025
• MAYBANK OF THE PHILS - 010220016
• METROPOLITAN BANK & TRUST CO - 010269996
• PHIL BANK OF COMMUNICATION - 010110016
• PHIL TRUST COMPANY - 010090039
• PHIL NATIONAL BANK - 010080010
• PRUDENTIAL BANK - 010150018
• PHIL VETERANS BANK - 010330016
• RIZAL COMML BANKING CORP - 010280014
• SECURITY BANK & TRUST CO - 010140015
• STANDARD CHARTERED BANK - 010050011
• UNITED COCONUT PLANTERS BANK - 010299995
• UNION BANK OF THE PHILS - 010419995
• UNITED OVERSEAS BANK - 010270189

These are the codes for the major banks in the Philippines and Indonesia. If your bank is not on the list, just give them a call and ask for the code. I do hope that they treat you well as they should.

Though the great Mike Abundo may have already had his vengence as he points out that with this new service from PayPal, sign-ups for UnionBank’s EON Card would slow down as the need for the card is lessened, you could use other credit cards to verify your PayPal and then add your bank account for direct withdrawals.

Plus, waiting time for your money to arrive has been lessened because now you just have to wait for 5-7 working days before the funds do arrive in your bank account unlike before which is 5-7 days of processing from PayPal to your EON Card then another 5 days or so from your EON Card to your bank account. Does this mean ‘goodbye EON Card’?

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I was browsing the sites of the many Isulong seoph contestants, when without giving much thought, I decided to search the much coveted key phrase on http://www.google.com.ph to see who’s currently in the number 1 spot since there’s almost a month left to go before the big winners are crowned.

Go-ogle.com.ph is in the number 1 spot, kudos to them! Then I reached the bottom of the first page and WTF?! I’m in! I’m in the 1st page of the Isulong seoph search result. OMFG!!!

Below are the screenshots I took of this little seo victory of mine.

I am not a contestant in the Isulong seoph competition, even though this free .com.ph domain I’m using is fully qualified to join. I opted not to join but still went on to learn and deploy SEO tips and techniques for the benefit of this blog of mine and to promote various causes, (a very good one would be the PayPal for the Philippines). I opted to be a supporter and audience of the contest instead, and so far it has been an equally rewarding and fun experience. Today, those experiences, efforts and lessons learned have finally paid off. Of course, Sir Angelo Racoma of the J Spot deserves the most credit for this.

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via Cnet.com: eBay bans Google Checkout

Does this mean that the tagline circulating among the blogoshpere and e-mail groups saying that ‘Google Checkout is no PayPal killer’ wrong?

The Elinor Mills writes in Cnet.com news blog:

“Safety and convenience are at the core of eBay’s policies toward payments,” the policy statement says. “This policy is designed to promote safe online shopping, and to encourage online payment methods that are safe, easy to use, reliable, and offer high levels of protection for users.”

eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said Google Checkout was added to the prohibited payment services list on Thursday primarily because it is so new and untested.

There you have it, ’so new and untested’ this, in all good intentions, means that Google must stop at rolling out products and services in the ‘beta’ stage. It may sound cool or cutting-edge stuff just because it has the ‘beta’ tag attached to it but eBay does have a point.

Can you trust your online transactions to be safe and totally secure when using a service that is still in beta or testing stage? Aside from a strategic move by [tag]eBay[/tag] to protect its own [tag]PayPal[/tag] service from the giant that is [tag]Google[/tag], it just makes perfect sense.

Still, I’m not totally with eBay on this move. It only makes sense as long as Google Checkout is in the ‘beta’ stage, once it does comes out as a fully functional stand-alone service it should be removed by eBay from its banned list of [tag]payment services[/tag], it would just be unfair and unethical business-wise.

As for Google, I can only wish that they speed up the development of [tag]Google Checkout[/tag] so as to avoid similar incidents like this in the future, and please make it available in the Philippines in the very near future.

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