With news that Smart Communications, Inc and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) partnering for mobile banking services, somebody asked why there is no such partnership between BPI and Globe Telecommunications. You see both Globe and BPI belong to the Ayala Group of Companies so it makes more sense for BPI to tie up with Globe. That baffled a lot of people, but it didn’t baffle me.
You see, back when I still had a Globe Pre-paid account, I had GCash account which was tied up with my BPI ATM Savings account. And I was able to do mobile banking by linking the GCash account to the ATM Savings Account. This allowed me to transfer money between the two accounts, and even load to my Globe pre-paid account without physically buying a load from an outlet.