Come join us in our nesting place.

The past week, I ran into a financial problem of sorts. Without advice or a word, the bank -where my payroll account  is - suddenly put my money on hold. Come now, don’t kid yourself into thinking I got a huge loot there for them to do that -because I don’t.

But imagine how  I felt when I found out I couldn’t withdraw a single peso from my account. Distressed is the word.

Checking with the bank, I learned that they,  after going through a recent audit in connection with the Anti-Money Laundering Act,  needed my marriage certificate for the name change. Imagine, after 4 years of being married it’s only now that they realized they needed it. And obviously there’s a miscommunication between the bank and my company because as far as I can remember, I have updated my records with my company right after I was married.

To make it short,  after a couple of days (that long!) and one too many frantic calls to  the company and the bank, things were finally ironed out and the hold order was lifted. *sigh of relief* Thanks, thanks heavens.

Thanks to the bank and the company personnel who were instrumental to  solving the issue. Maybe  I wasn’t in my best manners when I spoke with them but I was a little desperate and utterly frustrated that something so easy could take a couple of days to be resolved. Maybe they are also too busy then, but thanks to them I can freely withdraw money now.

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So says the email.

And tonight when I checked my PayPal account, I found out that it’s not a hoax. So it’s true. Adding a Philippine bank account to PayPal is already possible. Same is true for Indonesian bank accounts. Great news.

Prior to this, an EON account (product of Unionbank) used to be the only means -to my knowledge- to make withdrawal transactions from PayPal (since EON not only functions as ATM card but a credit card as well). That’s in the Philippines. And although I learned of EON subscribers whose accounts were processed quickly and seamlessly, I wasn’t as lucky. I didn’t have an easy enrollment contrary to bank ads. Mine took more than a couple of weeks (must have been a month) to have the account activated as a credit card. But maybe because I’m in the province.

But now, there’s obviously no need to go through the hassles of opening a new account. One can now add an existing Philippine bank account. Really a great news. I -and other Filipinos- have been waiting for this. And I’m so glad the long wait is over now and that this option is already available at last.

And I’m hoping they’ll add more countries to the list soon since other nationalities may be waiting as well.