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MANILA - Wage earners will soon be able to borrow from their upcoming salaries to tide them over until the next payday, according to the Bank of the Philippine Islands.

BPI is partnering with companies that use its payroll service to let their workers get a salary advance which will then be deducted from their upcoming paycheck.

Employers will tell BPI who among their employees will be eligible for this product, said John-C Syquia, BPI's Head of Institutional Banking.

The service will come via another app, not the main BPI app, Syquia said. While there will be no interest on the salary advance, there will be a one-time fee of P175 that will be charged to users.

BPI said it can sustain this service without needing to charge interest as it strives to build an "ecosystem" of services.

"We want to build our ecosystem and the way to do that is to provide sticky products. And we believe that if we add this enhancement to our payroll employers, we will have sticky relationships with our existing clients and we will be able to build that network too.

BPI will let employees advance 30 percent of their earned salary, and the bank will assume the risk of collection in case an employee is unable to pay.

Syquia said the BPI payroll system already has around 2 million people.

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