A safe option (Photo: Skrill)

If you are thinking of applying for an online account, or already have one, our series on payments will definitely prove useful.

Online gambling is all about fun and games, but you also have to be familiar with the financial side of things. If you keep up with online gambling payment methods, you’ll be able to choose the best option for yourself and your online dealings. Become well-informed and know everything important you should when it comes to handling your money. There are so many alternatives that a helping hand doesn’t hurt, so we’ve complied information on Skrill.

The numbers: currently, there are approximately 36 million Skrill account users worldwide, who can receive payments in 40 different currencies and 200 countries. Their Headquarters are in London, with 560 employees, but they also have offices throughout Europe and the U.S. The website says people can receive payment “without revealing their personal financial details,” which is vague, and many reviewing websites have problems with the lack of straightforwardness. Skrill prides itself in providing low services fees and transfer costs, which is definitely a plus. They have partnerships with 156,000 businesses worldwide.

Another name for Skrill is Moneybookers

Skrill used to operate under the name Moneybookers USA. It started in 2001, but was launched in 2008. According to the website CardPaymentOptions, we should think of Skrill as a kind of Paypal service for U.S. and European customers. From looking at the promotions on the official Skrill website, it becomes evident that usually, people use it for onlinegambling payments. So, great gamblers of the world, rejoice! Join Skrill and get so many gambling promotions you won’t even know where to start. Some of the entities which accept Skrill include Skype, Ebay and Plus500.

Skrill was known as moneybookers.com in 2002 (Photo: Skrill)

You can also get a Skrill card. It’s a MasterCard, so it can be used in numerous locations. It is basically a prepaid card, with means that you cannot spend money you don’t have (usually a good aspect for gamblers). Their website states that you can withdraw cash from over 2.1 million ATMs around the world and that fees are extremely low. Let’s take a look: there is an annual EUR 10 card fee, a EUR 1.80 ATM fee and the FX fee is a 2.49%. They do not charge you for online transactions, balance information retrieval, signing up, uploading money or cancelling your account. There are also no monthly fees whatsoever, which is absolutely fantastic.

Complaints service seems to be subpar

Although Skrill provides its users with many great features especially as an online gambling payment option, it also has a “dark side”: when it comes to complaints, CardPaymentOptions managed to locate around 125 of them. Some users experienced account freezes and found that they were unable to access their funds. The website states: “Many of these complaints have been posted by end users or personal users of the company’s services, but a good portion of them have been written by merchants. In general, merchants are suspicious of lengthy and excessive fund withholding by Skrill, particularly in conjunction with the excessive identity verification process require by the company.”

Customers also say that there is a lack of real information and customer service is slow and unhelpful. When reading reviews and ratings on websites such as Trustpilot, the experiences of Skrill users are mixed. Some say the service is incredibly fast with easily accessible funds and that they had no problems whatsoever. On the other hand, there are some pretty harsh reviews regarding frozen accounts and bad quality of customer service. We know that usually every payment option or bank has issues, it is not a novelty to have complaints flowing in. It is important to know the nature of these, however, to be able to make an educated choice.