Best Alternative Payment Solutions For Money Transfers & Online Shopping

Every once in a while, we need a solution to either pay money or receive money either commercially or personally for services. Whether it’s income generated from affiliate sales or receiving money for digital products & services, it is truly important to have a payment service faster than Checks. Since we’ve abundantly faced this problem & solved it for ourselves, we decided to share our knowledge on the best alternative payment solutions for money transfers.

How do Alternative Payment Solutions Work?

We call solutions that step away from wallets as alternative payment solutions. There are many of them out there and some truly amazing and versatile than the likes of PayPal. These payment solutions allow you to send and receive money from individuals and businesses. So for instance, you can get paid directly into your account held by the payment solution provider and you can withdraw funds directly in to your bank account or head to a nearby ATM for cash withdrawal in your currency.

We have put together a handy guide for alternative payment solutions as well as a money transfer service that disrupt the traditional model and allow you to easily get paid for services & physical products.

Below are some of the alternative solutions to PayPal and even Prepaid Cards.

Wise (formerly TransferWise) money transfer service

Wise (formerly TransferWise) has disrupted the traditional bank transfer model and has been at the forefront of cheaper transfers and transparency. They are here in the list since they give users multi-currency accounts in 11 denominations. Some of these currencies have their own bank accounts which act like regular bank accounts (with some limitations) This means that you can move funds from one foreign currency account to another without incurring crazy fees. 

Wise issues a physical MasterCard and virtual Visa cards to residents in EU, UK, Singapore, Japan and a few other countries. This makes it easy to shop online. Paying others is also easy via Wise to Wise transfers or to traditional accounts. Transferring money overseas is simple and fast. You simply register your account and choose the amount you want to transfer and where you want to transfer to. Pay in your local currency which is equal to the mid-market rate of the day.

Their pricing system is straightforward too and usually amounts to either 0.5% or 1% of fees, unless USD and SWIFT payments are involved. Even then their exchange rate alone makes up for the waiting time involved for SWIFT payments. They support a number of currencies including AUD, INR, and PKR etc.

Read our full review of Transferwise here.

Payoneer Payment Solution*

This is a rather unique service that allows its customers to make global payments (online) and also receive them. They have solutions for not just Small businesses but also freelancers. Payoneer has mass payout services such as prepaid debit MasterCard card, local bank transfers, branded debit cards (for companies) and a Payment Service for USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, JPY and CNH/CNY currencies.

Once you sign up with Payoneer and get verified, you get your own bank account in each of the currencies held in that country. There are restrictions of course. The account can only be used for payments being sent to you from companies and in the case of EUR account; from SEPA member countries only. The service is truly global and caters to companies and individuals from over 200 countries. There are some limitations to withdrawals for local bank accounts, however, the Payoneer card can be used to withdraw funds globally anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Another very good point in Payoneer’s favour is their fees. They are better than many service providers when it comes to FX rates and much cheaper than PayPal; making them a far better payment solution for processing international payments.

You can read the full review of Payoneer services here.

WebMoney Universal Payment System

This is used widely in Russia and its surrounding countries. They support a wide variety of services via purses which include, payments, withdrawals, entering into legal agreements, crowdfunding, fundraising and escrow services to name a few. WebMoney also allows trades in Bitcoin (via X-wallet, L-wallet, H-Wallet), gold (G-wallet). Fees vary depending on the transfer mode and wallet type. They deal in Euro, US Dollars and Russian Rubles. Here’s a list of WebMoney’s top-up & withdrawal methods. Once you’ve signed up, you can see their country coverage here.

Paysera Payment Solution

This is another innovative service that offers withdrawals in WebMoney and Payza accounts in addition to local bank transfers. Paysera is  also cheaper than Western Union and MoneyGram where currency conversion is required. Paysera has many pricing tiers which may be a tad confusing at times. Luckily, sign up is free hence one can always signup and see what services are offered through the system and at the time of money transfer decide which one offers the best rate with speed of transfer.

Western Union

With a global presence in 200 countries spread across all continents and 500,000 agent locations, Western Union provides low cost cash and bank transfers globally. Its a top choice where people want to send personal funds to their family back home. Unlike some of the other services mentioned here, Western Union is purely a remittance / money transfer service where people in developed countries send money abroad to those in developing countries. Their charges are nominal and their transfers within hours instead of days making it a great choice for low cost transfers.

Skrill Payment Solution

Skrill has come a long way from the days when it was unknown. Though still not as widely used as PayPal, there are many services that accept money & do payouts via Skrill. They are primarily a digital wallet, with the option to load wallet via multiple methods and withdraw funds to local accounts. Their digital wallet solution is available in over 200 countries and those looking for an online payment solution should definitely check out their business site.  For personal products, you can take a look at their fee structure, currency and country support at their Skrill Fees page. Having used their service quite extensively, we can attest that uploads & withdrawals to bank accounts globally are fairly quick. All they need is to expand the Skrill prepaid debit card outside of European Union.

So that’s a wrap on some very interesting money transfer and global payment solution services. What do you think of the above? Have we missed out on any that are acceptable worldwide? Please let us know in the comments.

If you think you just need a virtual prepaid VISA card, please read our listicle on the link. Another list of VISA gift cards can be seen on our feature covering Gift Cards. If you have trouble with address and phone number, I suggest you get a package forwarding address for that country and inserting it at checkout point.

And that’s it!

If you are aware of any wallet or alternative payment solution which is super awesome, let us know in the comments below so we can review them and maybe even put them up here as an addition ????

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