Moneybookers for receiving, making online payments                Home     Online Money Transfer

Moneybookers is a popular online money transfer systems, the European equivalent of  Paypal  . It is widely used for making online payments for small amounts, for casino payments and other forms of gambling, since betting is legal in UK. It is an electronic money transmitter regulated by  UK law and has more than 1.5 million users as of April 2006. Moneybookers is a very convenient way to transfer money within Europe, since bank charges for telegraphic transfer are usually very high.

It can be used conveniently for both customer-to-customer transactions and  for  business to consumer payments for most companies in the European Union . It was one of the first online money  systems to allow withdrawal to Indian bank accounts. Many small UK businesses are now outsourcing their software, data conversion work to India. They prefer to pay their Indian vendors by Moneybookers 

Moneybookers  uses email to inform the receiver that a payment has been made. The sender or purchaser can add funds  to his Moneybookers account  in one of  the 4 ways:
1. Charging the credit card ( Amex, Mastercard or Visa) for any transactions or payments. The fee is 2.5% of the amount

For people from Asia, Africa, Moneybookers insists on additional documentation for verifying the credit card. They will want proof of identity like drivers license, voters id card faxed to them or a scanned copy sent by email. This can be quite time consuming for payments of  small amounts
2. Debiting a bank  account in specific countries  for any payments or through SWIFT (wire transfer). There is no charge for this method

3. By cheque - only in UK and France
4. By receiving money from some other Moneybookers account holder

You can open an account for free for Personal Accounts. There are no fees for receiving money, and for sending money the fees are 1% (maximum 0.5 Euro)

Fees for withdrawing to bank accounts in other countries depend on the currency and country. For most European countries, you can directly withdraw to your bank account or  Visa credit card. However, in India, you can only withdraw by cheque at a fee of  3.5 Euro (approx. Rs 200)

Many banks (especially private banks) in India charge a minimum of  Euro10-Euro20 to process foreign currency cheques. So if  you receive a cheque  of  Euro$20, you could finally receive only Euro2 - Euro10 in your bank account, if  you do not select your bank carefully. Instead you could request payment of small amounts to your  Moneybookers account and when the balance in your account is substantial, the entire amount can be withdrawn by cheque.

Remit2India accepts transfers from a Moneybookers account. Unlike Paypal, chargebacks can be on payments through Moneybookers only with your payment.