Payment Provider SKRILL Takes Aim at U.S.A. Market

[JaBek1]

I must admit that SKRILL is not something that strikes me as a good choice for a name of a company that wants to handle peoples money. "I'll Skrill you," "i"ll Sc**w you." No, it just doesn't do much for me. I understand that it has some sort of meaning in the vernacular over in the UK, but I've got my doubts as to it catching on over here.

Of course, I'm the sort that prefers my bankers to wear three-piece suits instead of tee-shirts with advertising slogans and my bank building to look like a public building instead of a converted gas station. So what do I know?

[gazlannathai]

I've used MoneyBookers since early 2003 (actually had a moneybookers account before I had a PayPal or ppPay account) - they were one of my initial trio of payment services alongside NoChex and FastPay (very sadly missed - FastPay was owned by Nat West Bank and got the chop sometime around 2005 ... was the best of the lot as far as I'm concerned).

MoneyBookers gave me the facility and payment security to penetrate the South and Latin American markets with zero worry about unexpected chargebacks (all transactions are strictly buyer to merchant, including refund negotiations - a seller can trigger a refund, but a buyer cannot trigger a chargeback (might be different in the US for the eBayified MoneyBookers, but still same on the main UK, non-eBayified, service)).

I'm not keen on the new name either - not least because it's going to be a real tongue twister for East Asians, and that'll damage market penetration there, which has been growing really well the last five years. However I understand their ploy - skrill used to be an ancient name for currency according to the rename launch blurb ... any renaming, regardless of what they use, is going to stall market penetration growth and cause several years of user confusion - that's common for most businesses unless you have masses of marketing budget to throw at the switchover.

Those that don't yet have a MoneyBookers account, I recommend you get one - they're starting to get mainstream, and as angst at eBay/PayPal grows, they'll get bigger faster. They're nice people with no-nonsense approaches to rules and policies, keeping them simple and logical, plus they have excellent support for website integration. They are also now part of the standard payment options modules for most website shopping cart softwares, so if you're building your own site, they're one to have.

Gaz