BPI Targets 20% Increase in Credit Card Usage, Number of Enforced Credit Cards in ‘14

Manila — Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) hopes to increase both its credit card usage as well as the number of issued credit cards by 20 percent this year partly due to the tie-up with AirAsia.

The partnership encourages BPI credit card holders to use their plastic money to earn more points that can be converted into AirAsia BIG points, which is under the airline’s loyalty programme.

“This means BPI cardholders have more options in using their rewards points, and have more options in where they can travel using their BIG points,” BPI SVP for Payments and Unsecured Lending Ginbee Go said during the tie-up’s launch in Makati City Tuesday.

Under this partnership, BPI cardholders will be given a 13 percent bonus AirAsia BIG points if they convert a minimum of 300 Real Thrill Rewards (RTR) points from May 13 to July 13, 2014.

Beyond the said deadline, BPI cardholders can swap one AirAsia BIG point against three RTR points. The BIG points can be redeemed for AirAsia flights and services among others.

AirAsia BIG CEO Alice Goh, in a briefing after the launch, said BPI cardholders will not have a hard time collecting AirAsia BIG points because there is no specific things that they need to buy before they can swap the RTR points to BIG points.

”There is automatic conversion of all RTR points to BIG points if the BPI cardholder wants that. But the other good thing is they can combine the BIG points with cash to purchase tickets,” she said.

Relatively, Richmond Ezer Escolar, BPI Vice President for Cards Issuing Business of the bank’s Payments and Unsecured Lending Group, during the same briefing said they target to increase the number of credit card issuance to 1.2 million this year from one million as of end-2013.

”With this partnership we want them to try travelling by converting their RTR to BIG points,” he said.

Escolar said they do not have any target yet on how many RTR points will be converted into AirAsia BIG points noting that they “still want to test the market out.” By Joann Santiago (PNA) FPV/JS/UTB