If you do any sort of online work, like Marketing or Freelancing, you might have heard of the name Payoneer before. It is, without a doubt, the most popular payment method for affiliate marketers, bloggers, freelancers, and Amazon sellers.
So what is Payoneer all about? Is Payoneer legit? Is a Payoneer account free?
We will explore the answers to these questions and more in this comprehensive and short Payoneer review.
Payoneer Overview
Payoneer is a company based in New York City, and it was created in 2005. The service specializes in online payment transfers, and it is extremely popular with people living overseas in Asia, Africa, and Amazon affiliates.
Payoneer creates several virtual bank accounts for receiving payments from other countries, even if you don’t have a local account. In most cases, with a standard Payoneer bank account, you can receive transfers in many currencies, such as the US dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen, and British Pound.
The reason this service snowballed is that some companies, such as Amazon US, prefer paying their affiliates directly to their local bank accounts.
Affiliates that didn’t live in the United States used to wait for a cheque for months before Payoneer came into view.
You can also receive funds from other individual accounts, and companies can deposit funds into your Payoneer account.
The Difference Between Payoneer and Paypal
If you already have a Paypal account, and chances are you do, you might be asking yourself why you should try Payoneer, instead. Well, there are a few reasons.
If you are based in Europe, for example, Paypal will convert the money you have in your account into Euros, and the charge for the transfer fee is around 10 Euros.
Moreover, the conversion rate isn’t something to write home about when it comes to Paypal. Plus, you don’t get a Paypal card that you can use to withdraw money directly from an ATM.
In Payoneer’s case, this provides you with two advantages. You both get a prepaid card that you can use to withdraw money in your local currency, and the fees are much lower. For example, for a bank transfer of $200, you pay about $4 in fees.
How Does Payoneer Function?
Firstly, creating a Payoneer account is entirely free. You must verify your identity and give Payoneer your bank information to set everything up. This is necessary when you want to transfer funds into your bank account.
When you are done creating your Payoneer account, you will receive a prepaid card at home. Even though it’s not a credit card, it functions much like one, in that you can use it to get airplane tickets, make payments online, and utilize it in any store.
There is a mobile Payoneer app available, and you’ll be glad to know that it has improved significantly over the years. You can use the same service for eCheck processing and various other payments.
Are There Costs Associated With Using Payoneer?
We’ve already mentioned that creating a Payoneer account is entirely free, but the service itself isn’t.
You will have to pay a fee of $29.95 per year for managing the prepaid card. This might seem a lot for people who use their Payoneer account on occasion — but it’s not for individuals who get paid through Payoneer every month.
The conversion rates used by Payoneer are the official MasterCard ones. For local bank transfers, you pay around $2.99 per transfer, but a USD SWIFT transfer costs $15.
Sending money from one Payoneer account to another is free, but you will need to pay up to 2% if the recipient isn’t a Payoneer user too.
Cons of Payoneer
It used to be that you couldn’t bill people through Payoneer unless you had received $5,000 from companies. This meant that you had to wait for a while. By company, Payoneer means firms like Amazon, Upwork, and other such clients.
Fortunately, they seem to have dropped this requirement, so if you are a frequent user, you can bill clients or transfer money without fuss. Note: we don’t know how long they will maintain this feature so it might change at any time.
Another obvious disadvantage to using Payoneer would be the $29.95 yearly fee.
Payoneer is safe, depending on a few things. It used to be that there was no virtual terminal or payment gateway, which made transactions unsafe in comparison to what other services might offer.
But these days, the company is asking most users to provide their mobile numbers, so they are sent a code each time they make a transaction online. This feature significantly improves the safety side of Payoneer.
Moreover, there have been some complaints in the past about how Payoneer handles customer support. The service can also be slow, but this rarely happens nowadays. Plus, you can’t use Payoneer for large payments.
Pros of Payoneer
The first benefit of using this service is that it is an alternative to an overseas corporate account. Even if you are not a US resident or haven’t created a bank account locally, you can still receive payments from the US, for example.
The same goes for Europe, Japan, the United Kingdom, and many other places and currencies.
Another advantage would be that you can quickly and conveniently withdraw money from the prepaid card using any ATM. You are free to transfer the funds to your bank account, seeing how the fees are much lower for this transaction.
The platform is not complicated to navigate through, and the mobile app is agreeable to use. The 2022 statistics show that over five million people are using the service now, which means that it does work one way or the other and has been a success globally.
Alternatives to Payoneer
If you don’t feel like giving Payoneer a try and you’re still looking to get international transfers, try any one of the following reputable services:
- Neteller
- TransferWise
- Skrill
- Payza
- Splash Payments
- World First
- Paypal
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