Moneybookers - Okay now for U.S. resident money transfers

[Modee]

A number of years back, moneybookers could be used to transfer money between U.S. residents, and other U.S. residents, and between U.S. and non U.S. parties.

Then, starting a few years ago, moneybookers became essentially worthless for U.S. residents - we could neither send nor receive money from anyone.

Oddly, around the same time that moneybookers banned its use for transfers of funds by U.S. residents, it did allow itself to be used as a credit card processing option as an approved payment method for Ebay. But while the hurdles necessary to open a regular moneybookers account - used to transfer funds - were few, the requirements to open a moneybookers as payment method for EBay were greater, and required real name and address verification, and a social security number.

Recently, Moneybookers obtained the necessary licenses to allow it to be used for U.S. residents to send and receive money. In other words, moneybookers is back ON as a way to transfer funds between parties, and it will soon even allow the sending party to fund the payment via a credit card (currently the only funding options are from a bank account).

Moneybookers, now known as Skrill, recently wrote to me:

Thank you for contacting us.

Please be informed that recently the services we offer to our United States customers have been updated. Namely if you have an account in our system you will be able to receive funds from other end customers from any supported country, send funds to other end customers from any supported country, take advantage of our local ACH deposit option and our instant deposit option Mazooma.

We hope to have been of assistance and look forward to hearing from your soon.

Best Regards,
________

Skrill Team

I encourage you to open a MoneyBookers account if you can, simply to be able to transfer money quickly and easily between parties. If you know what you are doing, your MoneyBookers account may be opened anonymously - ask for tech support on this issue.

And if you already have a moneybookers account, look up the old username email and password, and go back and make sure the account stays active - you may find yourself using it again.

[Modee]

Moneybookers - now Skrill - has become a very difficult approval process

Although Moneybookers will open your account immediately, they now play a game where soon after you open the account, or definitely after your first incoming payment, they request a whole slew of documents: color scan of government ID, banking documents, business incorporation documents, proof of address such as bank or utility statement, and signing off on a few forms that Skrill provides.

They also want to review your company website and understand your business model.

Their scrutiny of these documents is intense, and in many cases they ask for more documents and in the end often come back to disapprove the application and shut down your account. If you are lucky, they refund the money received back to the sender, if any funds are in your account at the time of this review.

In any case - bottom line - MoneyBookers is no longer a simple "free for all" anyone may be accepted type deal. Given that moneybookers isn't even that well known (such that you clients may be reluctant to use it for payment), there are better alternatives for payment processing.