When it comes to doing errands, I’m the queen of laziness. I hate waiting in line for 30 minutes to one hour or more just to deposit a check. I also hate the fact that after waiting that long, we need to wait 3 more days for the check to clear if the check is from another bank. These are precious hours and days people where our money could have earned interest!
Speaking of interest, if we place our hard earned cash in a savings account also, our money only earns just .25%. You’re lucky if you can earn 1% interest per annum and usually, they give this rate to clients who have huge deposits or maintain Average Daily Balances that are high.
Anyway, an individual (like me!) would just like to have and to be able to do the following:
- Conveniently open a bank account anytime and anywhere – Please do not have us fill out numerous forms. I once had an experience with a bank that required physical presence and we had numerous exchanges of forms because their forms were just too complicated and they were asking for a lot of documentation!
- Save my money in accounts where I feel that my money is growing; I really don’t feel it with the current interest rate. I want to save, but please encourage me to do so, too! 🙂
- Conveniently transfer funds anytime and anywhere!
- If I get a check, can you provide me a service where I can deposit it right away?
So I did some research, as you all know! Some of you even saw my posts already about other finance apps that I’ve already reviewed. I’m living the life, peeps! I’ve discovered another convenient Mobile Application and it’s the ING Philippines Mobile Application.
Who is ING?
ING is a Dutch financial Institution that has been in the industry for 250+ years (yup, that long!). They have been awarded by Global Finance Magazine as Best Bank in the world 2017 and Best Bank in Western Europe for 4 consecutive years.
My friend also said that they were the first ones to introduct “banking without having to go to the bank” way back in 1997. This made them the biggest fully – digital bank, present in more than 40 countries wordwide.
Is ING in the Philippines?
Now this is the exciting part. They actually launched their ING Philippines Mobile Banking Application last November 2018. This year however, they will be going full on in spreading the word about it. I just found out about the ING Philippines app just this year, too, and quickly tried it out.
Opening an ING Philippines Account
What I personally like about ING is that you get to open an account anytime and from anywhere. There are no forms that you need to fill out. When I opened my account, I just had my Passport and a physical copy of my credit card statement by my side.
So, to open an account, here are my tips:
- Be in a well lit area, because the app will ask you to take clear pictures of you documents and a clear selfie.
- Be sure that you also have 1 government ID plus one proof of billing. Also make sure that the address is the same in all the documents and in the form that you fill out.
- Also, have a white, clean paper with your signature written using a black marker.
I had no problem opening an account. It only took me around 5 minutes to have an ING bank account. There were no physical forms that I needed to fill out and send to the bank.
The other thing that I liked about opening an ING account is it’s simplicity. I love that you can only open one Savings account (because that’s what you just need anyway, if you already have an account in one of the bigger banks in the Philippines). I love that it doesn’t have a Minimum Balance Requirement and I love that it earns an interest rate of 2% per annum.
How huge is 2%? Well, other banks have around .25% interest for their savings account. Here is the difference:
| ING | OTHER BANKS |
| Interest: 2% per annum | Interest: .25% per annum |
| Savings of Php 10,000 | Savings of Php 10,000 |
| After a month: Php 10,016.67 | After a month: Php 10,002.08 |
If you want to compute for the interest of the money that you save, you can use this interest calculator: http://www.webmath.com/simpinterest.html (just disregard the $ signs). You can also use this compound interest calculator: https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/free-financial-planning-tools/compound-interest-calculator
Depositing and Withdrawing from your ING Account
Depositing to your ING account is done now via two ways:
The first one is to deposit a check payable to you. And this is my most favorite feature of the ING Philippines Mobile Banking App, by the way. I receive so many checks and I lose time just falling in line and depositing them and then waiting for the clearing period. At least with this, I just take a picture of the front (no erasures) and the back (with ING and ING account number written with your signature and mobile number for endorsement written) of the check and just wait for the check to clear! So convenient.
The other way to deposit funds is to transfer funds via Peso Net to your ING account from UnionBank, Metrobank, PSBank, etc.
For withdrawals, you can transfer it back to your primary bank also using Peso Net. ING also does not charge any fees when customer transfers their money to another bank. ING believes that we should have control over all our funds and use our hard earned money in any way we like.
Other cool features:
You can save and also add your contacts and their bank account details in the ING Philippines App. No need to ask them again and again what their bank account details are. I love this feature because for my business, I need to pay a lot of people and these are usually the suppliers and the people that I have to pay frequently.
Their customer service representative is also easy to contact. They already have a button in the app that replies to you on a timely manner.
So that’s it, dear readers!
What really attracted me to open an account in ING and to use this as my “SAVINGS” account is it’s simplicity. It gives you the features that you want and the features that you need to live an uninterrupted life. No convoluted bank product options and no fees that you need to think about.
If you’re a mom like me who makes so many decisions already, save up the effort in choosing a bank account for your Savings. Try out ING Philippines and the ING Philippines Mobile Application.