Remember my post last December about the Universe telling me to get out more and had done so by letting me win a free trip for 2 to Hong Kong?

Well, I, along with the other winners, was finally awarded the prizes by BPI last week!

We were also awarded the cash prize of P24,700.00 so that covers our shopping money, yahoo!

After the awarding, BPI provided us some snacks and while we were enjoying the food, I learned a few things about BPI…

Here are some features that can be extremely helpful to you, BPI clients and users:

#1 Did you know that BPI has a mobile app?

The BPI Express Mobile app pretty much does all of the things the site can do, but one notable feature is that it can transfer funds to another unenrolled Express Teller peso account instantly.

Of course, you will need to go to a bank or an ATM machine to verify that you want to use this feature.

If you’re a little iffy about using a banking mobile app on your phone (you know, paranoia about security and all), just make sure you take the necessary precautions to make your account secure.

Here are some tips:

1. Make sure that your mobile phone is password protected. Put a password or passcode and never share it with anyone! Putting a password on your mobile phone will help in unfortunate moments like your mobile phone getting lost or stolen.
2. Use a secure password manager like 1Password. Aside from being able to manage all your accounts and logins, 1Password can create strong passwords for you. The best part is, you don’t have to remember them. All you need is a master password. (Please make sure you DONT share your master password with ANYONE.)

Also, with 1Password, you don’t need to manually type out your passwords. You can just cut-and-paste them from the app. This is definitely a deterrent for keyloggers.

I’m super excited to use the mobile app as this is really helpful when it comes to my online shopping addiction habit. Instead of going out to make a manual deposit, I can just transfer my payments to the online seller’s account via the BPI Express Mobile app!

The BPI Express Mobile app is available to both iOS and Android.

#2 Did you know that you can set an appointment for your banking transanctions online?

This feature is called the BPI Express Assist Online (BEA Online).

What you can basically do with BEA Online is reserve a time slot for you in your chosen BPI branch so that when you get there, you don’t need to line up in the long, long, LONG queue and wait for hours on end for your turn.

Isn’t that awesome?

I personally haven’t tried this feature yet but I will soon, as I have a P24,700 cheque to deposit ASAP, haha! 😉

One of the winners (I didn’t get her name) swears by this. What she does is, she goes to a BPI branch and if she sees that the queue is taking forever, she looks for a computer, signs in to her BPI Express Online account, uses the BEA Online to set an appointment and – tada! – shortened waiting time.

The next thing you know, the teller is calling out the queue number you got from BEA Online.

(She’ll probably get mad at me for sharing this secret, hehehe…)

So, what do you think about the BPI stuff I shared? Found any of them helpful?

I can’t wait to go on our Hong Kong trip! I just don’t know when to schedule it.

Perhaps in June for my birthday? Hmm, shopping spree in Hong Kong for my birthday sounds goooood, whatcha think? 😉

XOXO,