Last September, Smart Communications announced an interesting new card payments product called PayMaya, which ostensibly combines the abilities of a Smart Money mobile wallet, a VISA debit card, and a Beep stored-value card in a single platform … all without necessarily having a Smart mobile subscription. On the face of it, it seemed like a huge leap forward, but the hodgepodge nature of the product makes it a difficult concept to pitch to anyone but the most curious of early-adopters.

The Paymaya App

In order to get started with PayMaya, you’ll need to download the free IOS or Android app. Once you’ve registered, the app immediately gives you access to a virtual, on-screen VISA debit card, which you can deposit money to (more on this later) and use for online purchases. But what you really want is to upgrade to the physical card — which gives you access to user-to-user money transfer, ATM withdrawal, and Beep stored-value for trains (and soon, tollways).

Currently, you can only get the physical cards in one of three Smart Jump centers across the country — in SM Megamall, SM Cebu, and SM Lanang in Davao. To be perfectly honest, the only reason I was even able to put together this essay was because I already happened to be in Megamall on another errand. It’s hard to imagine the average person making this kind of effort. Indeed, our conversation with the customer rep at the Jump center indicated that they were seeing less than 5 signups per day currently, which is not exactly the most heartening on-boarding statistic for such an ambitious new product. (You’ll be able to get the cards at all Smart stores in 2016, however.)

The PayMaya Card

Getting your physical PayMaya card from the Jump Center is a pretty straightforward experience — you show your government-issued ID, fork over 100 pesos, and then jot down your contact information in a logbook.

The process is both impressively fast … and inexplicably redundant.

Firstly, the fact that you need to sign a logbook is just weird: they’ve photocopied your ID and linked it to your PayMaya customer profile, so there’s no information being captured in the logbook that you haven’t already provided twice over, in far more robust data formats.

Secondly, you pay them 100 pesos for the physical card, and that amount gets credited to your VISA balance as your very first deposit. That part is fine, and is a good way to welcome new users. However, when I asked if I could deposit more than 100 pesos, I was informed that they couldn’t accept my money and that I needed to go to a 7–11 or SM Business Center for that. So you can open your PayMaya account at Smart Jump, but can’t deposit funds through them. This is just mind-bogglingly silly, especially when you consider that they literally processed that initial welcome deposit for you not one minute ago.

Lastly, the virtual VISA card number that you get when you initially install the PayMaya app is DIFFERENT from the one on the physical VISA card, so you now have two different ways to accomplish the same thing. You can’t have more than these two card numbers though, which makes you wonder why you wouldn’t just collapse them into a single card.

Three Different Account Numbers, Two Different Balances

The PayMaya card has two important numbers printed on it — one corresponding to your VISA debit card, and the other representing your Beep account. Additionally, if you want to accept funds from another Smart Money user, you must give them a totally different number that is your mobile number prefixed with 8877. So you have to keep these three numbers straight in your head when interacting with the platform: the VISA number for retail spending, the Beep number for transportation, and the 8877 number for making deposits.