Paypal and the RCBC Mercury Drug MyWallet Card

(Photo by Toban Black)

Once again, I've received a message from somebody asking for advice on what to do because her Paypal withdrawal to her RCBC Mercury Drug MyWallet card is taking forever to appear in her bank account.

So I'm posting this article to tell you all right now: stop trying to use the RCBC Mercury Drug MyWallet card for your Paypal transactions! It has a bad track record as far as I could see from comments I've received so far on my old article, Withdrawing from Paypal to Metrobank, BDO, and RCBC.

It's true that some people have reported successful transactions for the abovementioned card. But there are also others writing with panic in their "voices":

HI.. ask ko lang nag withdraw ako sa RCBC Mercury Drug MyWallet Card nung Oct, 22 pero hanggang ngayon d pa cia dumadating. ano kaya ang problema bakit ang tagal yata ng delay.. hangang ilang araw ba ang maximum transaction period sa ganito.. slamat..

This comment was sent on October 31, nine days since the reported transaction. Paypal transactions normally take a maximum of five days from the moment you withdraw your money from the Paypal portal to the time your money appears in your bank account.

Or, to be more specific, when you withdraw your money, the transaction appears as "Pending" for about 1 to 2 banking days (holidays and weekends not included). Then it appears as "Completed," meaning that Paypal has completed the paperwork or whatever it does in its back office.

Two to four days after it shows as "Completed," it should appear in your bank account.

In my experience, if I withdraw from Paypal on Monday, the money appears in my bank account on Thursday morning.

Here's another comment:

5 days na eh hindi pa rin dumadating ang CASH from my PAYPAL to my MY WALLET VISA CARD.'.'.' Gaano katagal poh ba ang mga transaction na ganito?

And the most recent one, which came today and prompted me to write this article:

hello po, pwedi nyo po ba ako matulungan. I have a mercury drug my wallet visa card and I successfully linked it to paypal. Nag withdraw po ako nang pera from my paypal balance to my card the problem is hindi pa rin dumadating yung pera ko hanggang ngayon..malapit na mag one month from my withdrawal. .nag withdraw ako last dec. 28, 2011. Completed na yung status. I've been emailing RCBC customer service at sabi nila di pa raw sila nakakatanggap any funds from paypal. Ano po ba dapat ko gawin? baka mawala yung pera ko 

My advice to this last commenter was that she should request a formal statement or document from Paypal, so that she can show it to her bank, to prove that the money has been received by the bank.

She should also get a formal statement from the bank stating that they received no such amount from Paypal.

If she's lucky, her money will be returned to her Paypal account, minus P250 charge for the failed transaction.

That was my advice to her -- but to the rest of you, my advice is this:

Avoid getting into such problematic situations in the first place by simply getting a Unionbank EON card if you can't get a credit card to verify your Paypal account.

Unionbank has a formal arrangement with Paypal; their EON card is the only card I know that makes no deductions whatsoever on the amount you transfer from Paypal. The EON card has zero maintaining balance, though you do have to pay P350 per year to keep using the card.

I have been using my EON card for my Paypal transactions without any problems whatsoever for the last year.

Now, when you apply for your EON card, you may have to wait for two weeks before you get it (never mind that the teller said it would be ready in one week; chances are, you'll have to wait two weeks or more nonetheless -- but it's better to wait for a card for three weeks than to wait for money you transferred from Paypal to MyWallet for a month or more, right?)

Of course, I have my own complaints with the Unionbank EON card: if you try to use it for paying online purchases, it sometimes fails, even when it is sufficiently funded. It has failed me when I tried to use it to buy tickets online from Cebu Pacific. It failed me, too, when I tried to use it to pay for a home study course in California.

But as far as Paypal is concerned, if you don't have a credit card and a regular bank account, the Unionbank EON card is definitely your very best option.

More about the EON card here: How to Use Your UnionBank EON Account

DISCLOSURE: The Nanay Notebook has absolutely no affiliation with Unionbank. Know more about this blog's policy on sponsors and affiliates in our disclosure statement.

Posted in: paypal,product review