If you are engaging in the e-commerce, online trading, freelancing or in any other activity that involves delivering services or products in such a way where cash payments is not an option, you have most probably thought quite a lot about how to save funds. The reason for this is simple, old fashioned bank wire transactions are just outdated and ineffective. Not only you have to pay sky-high fees on the international transfers, but it also takes ages to land on the account. This is why many people have turned to various alternative systems, let’s examine those below.
PayPal
It is the first generally accepted online system for making the payments. By now it is still the most widespread one too. Whenever it comes to online transactions, PayPal is always considered as the best, and sometimes as the only, possible alternative. Essentially it is a digital wallet that assigns a certain ID to the user’s emails and, with the help of it, it is possible to send the funds and pay for the goods and services.
The scope of offered services is very large, starting from just paying for food delivery and going as far depositing funds into a financial trading account. If you are interested in the later, you may preview all Forex brokers accepting Paypal here. PayPal is a system that charges no or very minor fee on the transfers, and the transfers are instant. When it comes to payments for goods and services, PayPal charges the seller a significant fee. Depending on a country it can be anywhere between 5% and 10%. However, PayPal also offers a payment protection plan.
Skrill
Essentially this is a clone of PayPal that comes with a few advantages and also a couple of week points. Unlike PayPal, Skrill does not offer any payment protection. If you have transferred the funds and have not been provided with the services – your money are gone. You may, of course, submit a complain, but Skrill has been notorious about its support. Also, Skrill does not offer multi currency account, you may only have one type of currency assigned. As an advantage, Skrill offers its users a prepaid MasterCard. This is quite an impressive advantage over PayPal as it allows the users to pay both online and offline.
Today Skrill is mostly used for compensating various freelancers and for making deposits at various gambling companies.
Payoneer
Back in the day payoneer was huge. Its market share has definitely declined since Skrill has appeared on the market. While it also offers a prepaid card, the costs of transactions and the amount of deposit methods is smaller.
The system is now mostly used for internal transactions between payoneer accounts.
