EastWest Bank Internet Banking

EastWest Bank's online banking facility is called EastWestBanker.com. Among the many Internet banking facilities that I've used, I have to say that its one of my favorites because:

1. It loads pretty fast.
2. The interface is clean and streamlined.
3. Its almost always available.

EastWestBanker is running on Microsoft IIS 6.0. That means it is most likely running on a Windows 2003 host operating system with the ASP.NET runtime. Most banks seem to be running on a Unix/Java platform, which I find a bit more sluggish in comparison. In the many years I've used it, I hardly recall a time when the site was down due to maintenance. In contrast, most of the other local Internet banking sites go down for regular maintenance (scheduled or otherwise). EastWestBanker has won the Philippine Webby Awards for the banking category a couple of times in the past.

The back-end database service is Sybase. Their corporate Internet banking site has been spewing out errors the past few days that reveal it is running a Sybase ADO connector. The consumer website does not seem to have the same problem though.

All the standard bank functions are available. You can inquire balances; list your transactions; pay bills; request for fund transfers to your own or other EastWest bank accounts. With other banks, you usually have to go through the hassle to register 3rd party accounts and submit signed documents before you can execute a funds transfer to that 3rd party's account. In most other countries, this is also unnecessary. Online funds transfer are limited up to PHP50,000 per day.

EastWest Bank is owned by the Gotianun-led Filinvest Group. It currently has a little over a hundred branches nationwide. The minimum maintaining balance to open a personal savings account is only PHP3,000. EastWest Bank is a member of the Bancnet ATM consortium.

EastWest Bank account holders can make purchases from Dragonpay merchants using their EastWestBanker account. EastWest Bank customers who do not have access yet to EastWestBanker online Internet banking can simply go to their branch and request for one. The facility is provided by the bank free of charge.