Moneybookers: an alternative to Paypal

Still sad,sad,sad about oDesk and Paypal. Last email I got from somebody at oDesk named Michelle is that the Paypal transactions will be resumed by June 10... which is technically yesterday, Philippine time. But as of this writing when I tried to withdraw my earnings at oDesk I was still greeted by the same error message indicating that transactions are still suspended.

Reading the forum posts about the matter gave me the unfortunate news that the reactivation was moved to June 11 PST (Saturday in the Philippines). So it is still an impasse as far as Paypal withdrawals are concerned.

Now, when this problem first broke out, Tuesday I think, I had immediately signed up for a Moneybookers account which was to be "use-able" on June 10. True enough my newly created account has now been linked to my oDesk account and I can already withdraw! Woohoo!!! Three cheers for Moneybookers!

However, much as I wanted to withdraw every single dollar I have with oDesk right away I thought it will be more prudent to withdraw just "some" of my earnings. I wanted to see first how the whole thing works and if it will work well with my BPIFB account.

The money I withdrew from oDesk was "immediately" credited to my Moneybookers account and was available for transfer to my local bank account, so with bated breath I pressed on the "Withdraw" button. There were three steps to the process of fund transfer and the second step necessitated that I verify my account. Moneybookers presented options with corresponding time frames. I chose to verify my account via credit card since it was marked "Instant" unlike the verification by sending mail to our residence address which we all know can take forever given how slow our postal service is.

Verification via credit card took just a minute or two, all I needed to do was input my credit card info, and I was off to the third step of the withdrawal process which was to confirm that I wanted to push through with the withdrawal. Naturally, I did.

The "History" tab immediately reflected what transpired in the last few minutes... from Moneybookers receiving the money from oDesk to the credit card verification up to the transfer to my local bank. First the transfer was marked "Pending", but when i checked again after about an hour it has been marked "Processed". Hmmm... I am beginning to like Moneybookers more than Paypal.

Anyway, I am still waiting for the money to be credited to my account by BPIFB. Hopefully, it gets credited tomorrow because it seems Moneybookers pride itself with a fast turnaround. At the latest, my money should be in my account by next week... by Tuesday I hope.

If you would like your own Moneybookers account as an alternative payment method for oDesk, please do sign up using

https://www.moneybookers.com/app/?rid=17024565

or click on this...