Paying with cash is a way of life. Whether it’s for monthly groceries, that daily cup of coffee or the occasional pair of shoes or clothes, cash has been the most popular mode of payment. Let’s face it, cash has been the most accepted form of payment for thousands of years across the whole world. Everyone knows how to use cash and because it can be used and accepted by just about anyone and any institution, it’s the ideal payment method for everyday spend. It wouldn’t come to any surprise if someone said that 95% of all payments are still done via cash. Cash is still king; and it’s specifically because cash is so prevalent that the flip side of using cash is often overlooked: cash is actually a big hassle.
When the shopping experience of a cash shopper is broken down, its inconvenience becomes more apparent. First, shopping with cash requires cash. And to be able to get cash, a shopper needs to look for an ATM to withdraw from his account. At times, the nearest ATM can be quite a distance away, and that’s assuming its location is already known to a customer beforehand. Searching for and reaching that nearest ATM takes a good amount of time and can be a very inconvenient experience the shopper. The lengthy line for withdrawals at these ATMs does not help a shopper’s tight schedule either. Once cash is finally in the hands of the shopper, he would now have to deal with the safety of carrying a large amount of cash. When paying, the shopper now needs to contend with counting both his payment and his change. Aside from being time-consuming, this process is also very prone to error; and sometimes, these errors - those few missing pesos and cents - are often overlooked. Paying with a debit card allows customers to skip all these extra unwanted steps and get on with shopping for their wants and needs.
“Most of the time we forget and become oblivious to the hassles that cash give us. Sometimes it’s because we don’t know of a better alternative, and at other times it’s simply because these alternatives give an impression of being difficult to use or hard to acquire. We’re too comfortable with cash and getting out of that comfort zone can be a challenging task. This is what we at BPI are trying to change.” says Jake Alejo, BPI Debit Payments Product Manager, “We want to dare our customers to get out of their payment comfort zones. We are daring them to skip the cash and pay directly with their debit cards.”
“With the use of BPI Express Teller Debit Cards, customers can skip the hassles of cash altogether by paying through the Express Payment System (E.P.S). It’s just a matter of getting over that imaginary barrier to the first transaction. After experiencing that first transaction, customers realize how much more convenient it is to pay through E.P.S. rather than through cash and become converts to going cashless.” Mr. Alejo adds.
With the use of BPI Debit Cards, customers can pay directly from their BPI deposit accounts. This allows customers to skip the different hassles of cash and go straight to the cashier when paying for their goods and services. Customers simply shop, swipe their debit card at the POS terminal, and input their PIN to complete their transactions, making for a simpler, safer, faster, and more convenient shopping experience.
Currently BPI has over 7 million customers of which around 30% of debit cardholders use their cards for payments at POS. It is accepted in over 45,000 merchants nationwide and can be transacted through any BancNet accepting POS terminal.
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