Hello Charles Nighbor and fellow CRers -
I am trying to make Moneybookers work for a payment to South Africa. (Apparently Paypal does not work there.) Moneybookers may, in fact, be a useful mechanism, but my experience to date is that there are MANY hoops to go through. Most of which ARE NOT described in their web site (pretty site, very incomplete content).
They did respond to a note I sent them. A summary:
* They do NOT have a cooperating bank in the US. (they are based in London) * The Upload limit by credit card is $50/month AFTER you verify my card information. Before that it is $10/month. The other way to upload is from my bank account. * ". . . international bank transfers take about 10-12 days to be processed" (International includes the US). This means that it takes that time to get the money uploaded into my Moneybookers account and (I believe) an equal amount of time to send the money to the recipient. * I must go to my bank to upload from my account (my bank will charge a fee). The upload feature on their site only gives me the information to take to my bank.
I don't know enough about international $ transfers to know if moneybookers provides any useful service. If I wire transfer to them, I can wire transfer to the account of my seller just as well? An advantage of this system would be that the recipient does not need to reveal his/her account info to me?
Does anyone have experience with them? Does it work?
I have included the message from Moneybookers at the end of this email.
Cheers,
Skip Echert Renton, WA -------------------
At 09:44 AM 11/10/02 -0800, charles nighbor of walnut creek, CA wrote:
>Check this web site out for those overseas Ebay amounts due or any other
>accounts
>http://www.moneybookers.com/app/
>Site states,"Send payments via emailPay anyone with an email address. The
>recipient receives the payment instantly and can transfer it to a bank
>account of his choice - he does not need to be registered with
>moneybookers to receive your payment. It's perfect to send money to a
>friend, settle personal debts or pay for online auctions. Moneybookers
>beats the cost, delay and inconvenience of traditional payment methods."
>charles nighbor
>walnut creek, CA
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
---------------------- Here is the text of the reply Moneybookers sent: ---------------------- Dear Sir,
Thank you for getting in touch with Moneybookers Customer service. Please note that when you ask to upload funds into your account via bank wire it is not generated automatically, i.e your bank account is not debited immediately. When you ask to upload funds you will get a message informing you of our bank details. You can also make a pending transfer, and the transaction id that will appear when you make it is the one that you will have to fill in while instructing the transfer to our bank from your bank. Therefore, the next time that you ask to upload and make a pending bank transfer please take down our bank details and the transaction Id and then revert back to your bank and instruct the transfer. When we receive the funds into our bank account to which you have instructed the payment, we will credit your account with us. Moreover we would like you to know that international bank transfers take about 10-12 days to be processed. If your country had come under our list of local supported payments then this would have been comparatively inexpensive and faster. Detailed information on the countries that form part of our network of local supported payments you can find by clicking on the link below:
http://www.moneybookers.com/
Here you will find all the information vis-à-vis our network of banks all over the world. Unfortunately, we do not have a bank account in the United states as of now.
Unfortunately, even after verification your credit card limit would be only 50$ for every 30 days, and before verification it is 10$. This information is available when you go to "my account" in "profile" under your name there is a status(verified or unverified). When you click on this status your limits will be displayed.
We hope that this has information has helped you to clear any doubts you may have had in this matter.
Please feel free to contact us for any further information. We would like to thank you for your suggestions and we would like to assure you that we will keep them in mind for improved performance in the future.
Best regards,
Yours Sincerely,
Moneybookers Service.