Are Paypal bank codes really important?

When PayPal first launched the withdraw to bank account feature, it did so without coordinating with local banks in the Philippines.

An obvious proof is that banks did not have a clue what a Bank Code is. The Bank Code is a 9-digit number unique to a Philippine bank that Paypal requires before a bank account can be attached to one’s account.

On the first days of the new withdraw feature, banks such as Metrobank and BPI told their clients a bank code which proved to be different from the official Paypal Philippines Bank Codes.

Some banks like UnionBank even insisted that the bank code is not required, despite persistent explanations to their Customer Support Representatives that this is a required field in Paypal.

Worse, other banks had no idea about the bank code, telling their customers about Swift Codes, Routing Numbers, BRSTNs, and what-have-you. Much, much worse, though, is that some banks did not even know about the existence of Paypal.

Surprisingly, however, users who attempted to request withdrawals using the “unofficial” bank codes still got their transactions processed. PMT member Louis shared that, instead of using the official bank code, he used the BRSTN number given to him by his Chinabank branch. Yet, he received his Paypal funds to his bank account after 4 banking days.

Which leads me to the question: Are the bank codes really important? Will Paypal (and the banks) really decline a transaction if an incorrect bank code was used?

Tell us your stories. Did you try withdrawing Paypal using an “unofficial” bank code? Was it processed? How long did it take? Were there any charges?

Post here or join the discussion in the How to withdraw Paypal funds in the Philippines thread.

Topic keywords for this post:

• bpi brstn code
• brstn code for metrobank
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• BRSTN code