EastWest Basic Savings Account: Best Way to Withdraw your Paypal earnings

Note: This is NOT a paid advertisement of any bank or company but an account of author's personal experience. Also, this is not a tutorial on how to use/enroll the card. This is a post of why I personally prefer it over the other leading bank(s).

I strongly recommend opening an EastWest Basic Savings account (or EW) if you rely on your Paypal earnings as a freelancer over the leading bank. Here's why.



First, let me say that I stumbled upon the bank because I had some concerns: one, I am looking for a potential second bank account as I don't like the idea of putting everything in one (in case my main bank, BPI, encounters any problem). Two, I'm in search of a cost-effective way because BPI charges P150 every Paypal withdrawal and when you do it regularly, the bank is earning at least how much you have to pay for your credit card annual fee. That big money in the long run.

In search for a "fee-less" Paypal withdrawal service, I decided to open an EastWest Basic Savings account and a UnionBank EON account (or UB). UB, because my sister uses it and I used to have one before. Although I'm not satisfied with EON (I opened an account back in 2009, iirc), I still opened one in case I don't like EW. The requirements are almost the same with an addition of a 1x1 or 2x2 ID photo for EW. Both will issue you a Visa debit card which you can use to purchase things online with the difference of EW giving you the card after a week while you can get UB's within the day. But hey, EW's card is infinitely shinier (literally!) and more handsome. EW's card has a microchip and your name embossed while UB's printed like the regular cash card. You have to pay P100 for EW as an initial deposit (don't worry, it stays in your account) while you'll need to pay P550 for UB. That is P350 as the card's annual fee and P200 if you will use the card to verify your Paypal account. I didn't really need to pay for P200 since my account is verified already. But like I said, I'm looking for a secondary bank account anyway so I paid for it anyway since it stays in my account (I assume but I could not access my account at this moment. More on that later.)

After you get your cards, you can enroll them on online banking. Months ago, EW has the NetAccess although they're changing it to a new system effective March 1, 2016.

I must say that it was my first time to try the new EastWest Online last night and I thought I'd encounter some problem, I would need to go to my branch for access. But I did it despite the error messages they gave me such as "The email address you entered has already been registered. Please call...". How? I don't remember anymore but I went through updating my security questions and updating my password and finally I was able to login back to my account.

Anway, back to the Paypal topic, I prefer to use EW over UB. First because, well since December until now, I cannot use my UB card online. And I'm not going to put any money on something I can't have access online. Back in December I thought it was temporary that they disabled new account enrollment online. Now, it gives some new kind of text error. So my UB EON card is useless, sad to say.

The good news about EastWest's is that: 1) I could see my withdrawal reflected on my account in less than a day!

I withdrew my money from Paypal some minutes after midnight (2/17/2016 00:52:46 GMT+08:00) and remembered to check my account around 6PM the same day, and voila! My account is updated :)

It's very efficient, I must say and great if you need to get your money later in the day instead of waiting for 3 days. And did you notice that my account earns an interest every month? That's sweet, no matter how small it may seem. I might even decide later to transfer some of my savings in this account if I eventually get a credit card from EastWest especially now that the BPI bank in our mall is relocated (that's inconvenient, BPI).

Any feedback about EastWest's credit card tho? Share me your thoughts.