Shopping Online With the UnionBank EON Visa: What Changed in 2024 and What to Use Now
The EON Prepaid Visa was discontinued in July 2024. Here is what happened to old balances and which cards now do the same job for PayPal and online checkout.
Key takeaways
What changed
The UnionBank EON Prepaid Visa was discontinued on July 22, 2024. UnionBank stopped new issuances, blocked reloads, and began winding down the card portfolio. If you still have a physical EON Prepaid card in a drawer, it no longer works for online purchases, PayPal funding, or ATM withdrawals. The Visa BIN tied to the old prepaid program has been deactivated.
Residual balances were swept by UnionBank as part of the wind-down. Cardholders who never moved their funds out before the deadline can still claim them, but the claim has to go through UnionBank Customer Service with full identity verification, and the money is returned as a credit to a UnionBank deposit account rather than reloaded onto a card. There is no successor "EON 2.0" product. The EON brand itself has been folded into UnionBank's general digital banking offering.
The wider Philippine prepaid landscape thinned out at the same time. BPI Amore Prepaid Visa shut down on December 27, 2024. RCBC MyWallet ended on November 11, 2024. BDO Cash Card was retired in March 2025. The old advice in legacy ShopByCards guides, including this one, pointed at products that no longer exist. This rewrite reflects what is actually available in 2026.
What to use instead for PayPal and online checkout
If the reason you wanted the EON Prepaid Visa was to fund a PayPal account or pay at sites that don't accept GCash directly, the two closest replacements are the Maya Mastercard and the GCash Mastercard. Both are reloadable, both are accepted everywhere Mastercard is, and both can be linked to PayPal as a funding source.
Maya Mastercard
The Maya Mastercard has a PHP 0 annual fee, a free virtual card available the moment you open a Maya account, and a free physical card by request. It is the cleanest like-for-like replacement for what EON used to do. The main weakness is that Maya's reload network leans on its own cash-in partners; depositing cash at a non-partner outlet means paying a convenience fee. KYC is required to lift the wallet limits to the level most online shoppers will want.
GCash Mastercard
The GCash Mastercard is also PHP 0 annual but carries a PHP 250 one-time issuance fee plus shipping. There is no fully free virtual equivalent for international online purchases; the GCash virtual card is limited compared to Maya's. If you already live inside the GCash ecosystem and you want one physical card that handles in-store taps and online checkout, it is a reasonable choice, but it is not as cheap to start as Maya.
PSBank Prepaid Mastercard and the new BDO Pay Card (which replaced the BDO Cash Card in March 2025) are also options if you prefer a traditional bank issuer. Both involve a branch or app onboarding step and a small card fee.
PayPal verification in 2026
PayPal's verification flow for Philippine accounts changed in the last two years. The charge that confirms your card is now PHP 100, not the old USD 1.95 or PHP 110 figure that appears in older guides. The amount is refunded to your card balance once verification completes. The 4-digit code still posts to your card statement in 2-3 business days, and you still enter it inside your PayPal account to finish the link. Maya and GCash both surface the code inside the app under the card's transaction history, which is faster than waiting for an emailed statement.
If you only need the account, not the card
A lot of people used EON as a no-maintaining-balance deposit account, not as a shopping card. For that use case, the 2026 options are stronger than what was on the market in 2019.
- CIMB UpSave: 2.50% p.a., PHP 0 to open, PHP 0 maintaining balance.
- Maya Savings: 3.0% base rate plus up to a 15% boost on the first PHP 100,000, subject to qualifying activity.
- UnionBank Online Savings: PHP 0 maintaining balance, opened in-app.
- RCBC OneAccount iSave: PHP 0 initial deposit, tiered 0.15-0.20% interest.
- BDO Basic Deposit: PHP 0 to open in-app or branch, PHP 100,000 balance cap.
All five are covered by PDIC insurance up to PHP 500,000 per depositor per bank, the same protection the EON deposit account carried.
Bottom line
The EON Prepaid Visa is no longer a product you can sign up for, reload, or use. For PayPal-linked online shopping in 2026, the Maya Mastercard is the cheapest entry point and the GCash Mastercard is the most convenient if you already use GCash. Pick one, link it to PayPal with the PHP 100 verification charge, and ignore any guide that still tells you to apply for EON.