BPI Classic and BDO Shop More Mastercard Are the Best Credit Cards for Employees. (Part 2)

WARNING for employees! Apply for a credit card only if you haven’t changed your old but nice Nokia phone, if you only have a few pairs of good shoes and just enough good clothes, and if your usual routine is home-to-work-then-back-to-home. These mean you have complete control of your spending.

BDO Shop More has also many features that most other cards don’t have:

1. BDO charges 3.25 %, lower than the usual 3.5% rate charged by other  Mastercard or Visa providers in the country.
2. The total annual membership fee is P900, which is much lower than the P1,600 charged by others of the same card class. What is even nicer is that BDO doesn’t charge you the whole P900 in advance. It just adds P75 to your due every month. The others bill you P1,600 at the beginning of your annual period, with you paying interest for it from month to month if you don’t pay it in full at once.
3. BDO also has products that help you avoid the very expensive Cash Advance during emergencies. These are EasyPAY Cash, which requires you to present official receipts of cash purchases and EasyPAY Cash Tuition Assist, which requires school receipts. In terms of cash release, BDO does a bit better than BPI because you can get your cash immediately over the counter after some minutes of paperwork. Interest rates vary from 0.88% to 1.6% monthly, depending on the amount and term.
4. BDO has launched a Charge-on-Demand facility for Meralco bills. This is good for cardholders that don’t like to auto-charge bills. You just phone BDO with your bill on hand. The only hassle with this system is you have to fax the bill to BDO after the phone call.
5. Just like the others, BDO also offers balance transfers, with rates ranging from 0.70% to 1.6%, depending on  the amount and term. Unlike BPI Classic, BDO pays directly to the other card, to prevent you from diverting the money.
6. In terms of where and how to pay dues, BDO gives the least hassle because it keeps longer hours and it seems to have a branch in every corner nowadays, in addition to its SM mall branches and customer service centers which are also open on weekends and holidays.
7. Lastly, the BDO card comes with a free SM Advantage Card, which you can use to collect cash points at SM, Petron, Ace Hardware, Watson and other SM affiliates.