BPI Corporate Internet Banking Facility

I opened a corporate account with BPI for use with Dragonpay. BPI's corporate Internet banking access is called BPI Express Link (www.bpiexpresslink.com), as opposed to, their consumer Internet banking service called BPI Express Online (www.bpiexpressonline.com).

To avail of Expresslink, BPI used to require their corporate clients to maintain an average daily balance of P500k. This is really steep considering the other big banks like BDO and Metrobank give it for free with any corporate checking/savings account at minimum balance. But I think BPI has recently softened up a bit and has lowered it to P250k. I was able to get read-only/inquiry access by maintaining a P100k minimum ADB.

BPI Expresslink is one of the barest corporate Internet banking I've ever seen. I can't imagine why anyone would charge P100k for this, much more P500k. Metrobankdirect Corporate Banking is a whole lot more sophisticated and better looking. BDO Corporate Internet Banking is, well, functional. Its not pretty, but it works. :P

BPI Expresslink is very specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Since I've been using Google Chrome predominantly for months now, there are some features that do not work well with me:

1. The top main menu bar is not visible with Chrome. You only see this thin red line. I thought it was just a separator bar. Turns out that its supposed to be the main menu bar when viewed in IE. It holds the "Logout" button. So for the first few days when I was just using Chrome, I thought there was no way to logout the system.
2. When viewing the account statement, Expresslink dumps some sort of fixed-length text file with beginning and ending tags which you have to figure out how to decrypt. At first, I thought you needed to download some special program just to make heads and tails of what it is supposed to show. As it turns out, if you use IE, it renders properly. I suppose it must be using some IE-specific Javascript or XML transform to render it on-screen.

Expresslink also has the strangest way of displaying the running balance. Whereas the conventional way is to display it like a passbook line entry wherein the latest entry appears at the last and shows the transaction amount and the ending running balance, Expresslink displays your daily transaction in reverse chronological order (from newest to oldest), and recomputes the running balance starting from newest transaction of the day to the oldest. So the ending balance is not with the latest transaction, but with the first. Very illogical.

But because the site is so bare, I have to admit that its quite spiffy. Unlike RCBC AccessOne or Unionbank's Internet banking which is very sluggish, Expresslink responds very quickly with not much bells and whistles.

Bad Experience Opening an Account with EastWest Bank

I went to the Katipunan Branch of EastWest Bank this Monday to open a corporate bank account for Dragonpay Online Payments. I got there at around 2pm and there was only one lady at the customer service counter and one teller. The Katipunan branch is actually in White Plains already, and not in the Ateneo area of Katipunan.

The customer service lady told me that EastWest has this zoning policy which basically says that a branch can only accommodate account openings for individuals or companies whose registered address is in the geographical vicinity of the branch. Since Dragonpay is officially registered as a Makati company, she said that she cannot open an account for me at Katipunan. She added that she will have to consult with her branch manager (who was not there) if she can open an account for me since my residence is closer to this branch.

To save myself the trouble of dragging Cols again to the branch to sign documents, the lady agreed to let me take home the signature cards and other application forms. Then once she gets confirmation from the branch manager that its ok to proceed, all I have to do is drop-off the signed documents.

The next day (Tuesday), I called the branch for an update on the approval. The lady said she did not have it yet but promised to call me within the day. The day passed; no call. The next day (Wednesday), I called the branch again and looked for the same lady. Again, she promised to get back to me within the day for an update. The day passed again with no call from her. Very poor customer service!

Thursday came and it was Quezon City Day, so the branch was closed; not that I was actually expecting them to call. I decided to just bring the signed application forms and signature cards to the PBCom branch of EastWest along Ayala Avenue. Since the docs were already signed, Cols did not have to go with me anymore.

The two guys manning the customer service also seemed totally clueless when it came to opening corporate accounts. They were obviously greenhorns and had to ask for help from other officers with almost everything that I inquired about. They were actually more pre-occupied entertaining the guy deployed by their IT department to fix the PC's there, than to entertain clients. One can really see the difference between big banks like BDO, BPI, Metrobank and these smaller/mid-size banks when it comes to training their personnel and providing decent customer service.

After about 30 mins, I finally got an account opened. I can't believe it actually took me four (4) days just to open an account with EastWest. Contrast that with my experience with BDO, Unionbank and Metrobank where account opening takes less than half-an-hour from the time you enter their doors.

Using RCBC Access One Internet Banking

I got my RCBC ATM card yesterday. It took them almost a couple of weeks to release an ATM card. With other banks like PSBank and Landbank, you get your card at the same time you open the account. I guess RCBC does not invest in the card embossing equipment for each branch and would rather have it centrally done.

The ATM card is needed to enroll to RCBC's internet banking, called Access One. Using the online enrollment facility was quite simple. You fill-up all the details and just click the submit button. It then tells you that they will need 1 day to manually verify the details. I kinda preferred Chinabank and BPI's method of just activating it through an ATM machine instead of going through this manual verification process.

In any case, I received an SMS at 8am on my way to work telling me Internet account is ready. So when I got to the office, I tried the id and password I defined to enter the system. The screen area where my account is supposed to appear was blank. I called up the call center and they told me that sometimes, the notification alert is sent too early -- before the account is really ready. That's weird.

Another little snag I observed is that their system sends out an email notification also telling you that your Access One account is ready. But in my case, I also received notifications meant for other people! The RCBC guys have to do a bit of debugging when it comes to notification.

Standard Chartered Online Banking Registration

I passed by Standard Chartered Bank in Ortigas last week to know more about their online banking service. While I don't have a bank account with SCB, I do have a credit card with them. And they allow creation of an online account using just your credit card (although, of course, the available features are very limited).

Unlike the other online banking enrollment systems I've encountered, SCB is the only that that relies on SMS as a form of confirmation. During the enrollment, you will be prompted for your mobile phone and it will send some registration code there. Upon receipt of the SMS containing the code, you can proceed with the activation.

Now, I would normally say that's an ingenious way of confirming one's identity. The only problem is the SMS delivery system seem to be very unreliable (or perhaps their SMS gateway is heavily clogged). But from the time I made the request until the time I actually received the SMS, it took more than an hour -- so much so that the time alloted for me to enter the code to continue with my activation has already expired.

I had to manually call their call center for assistance. It was a bit of a pain. And it seems that this mobile confirmation system is also implemented with the regular banking functions like authorizing funds transfer. Again, I laud them for this extra confirmation process, but if its that unreliable, it will just end up being more of a bane than a boon.