The popularity of prepaid debit cards has been growing steadily over the last few months due to the digital lifestyle needs of Filipinos. Quite recently Paymaya, one of the pioneers in this space, announced that you could use your Paymaya card to pay NLEX toll fees by just tapping your card on the reader. We received a few questions from our readers asking which specific Paymaya card was needed to do this so we went ahead and put together this guide for people interested in the product.
There are Primarily 2 Paymaya Cards: Virtual and Physical
If you will just use the card primarily for online purchases, you don’t really need the physical Paymaya card. You can just download the app, link it to your mobile number, and then just load with cash via the 15,000 reloading partners nationwide (SM, Robinson’s, 711, Petron, Ministop, etc). You can also reload online via BDO and Unionbank.
Now let’s say you want the physical Paymaya card. You just need to buy the physical card via the Paymaya online store (7 days for delivery) or through any Smart store nationwide. From there you just need to link the physical card to the mobile app so that it becomes one account.
Different Kinds of Paymaya Physical Cards
There are two main physical Paymaya cards. The first one is the Paymaya VISA physical card. By default non-Smart subscribers get this one if they decide to buy. This is also the first version of Paymaya that launched last (or was it 2) years ago. The primary difference between this and the Smart Paymaya Mastercard is that this doesn’t have contactless payment and you can enjoy VISA-related promos.
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The second type is the Smart Paymaya Mastercard. Apart from the promos and perks that you get from Smart, this is the card that also allows you to “tap and go” at NLEX and eventually other tollways. You can also use the contactless payment feature in other stores that accept payment the same way. According to Paymaya, you can still buy a Smart Paymaya card and link it to your account even if you’re a Globe subscriber. If this is the case, we recommend you get the Smart Mastercard if only for the contactless feature of the physical card.
There are also special custom made Paymaya cards for companies and organizations. Over the last few months, Paymaya has deployed these special cards to companies such as Uber, AirBNB, Sunlife, and various local government units. They also had a project where they turned all the school IDs of a school into Paymaya cards.
Can I withdraw Cash from Paymaya?
Yes, you can. However you need to upgrade your account. You need to enter the Paymaya app, click upgrade, fill up the form, and submit documents. You will then get a confirmation SMS and after that you will need to undergo physical face-to-face validation. You can do this either via video call or present the documents to any bayad center.
Upgrading your account let’s you withdraw cash from ATMs (standard withdrawal fee of P15), transfer money to other Paymaya accounts via the App, and it increases your monthly limit of spending from Php50,000 to Php100,000.
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If there’s anything we didn’t cover well in this article, you guys can head over to the Paymaya FAQ page on their website by clicking here. You can read more about the Smart Paymaya Card and all of it’s related perks here.