I have a question similar to this one, only that my question is focused on “non-Western” users (with this I refer to users outside of Western Europe and the US).
I have to pay users of my website (for services rendered for instance), and they are located at places where banking systems are poor to say the least. They do have ATMs, and credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, etc) work in most of these countries.
After many hours of browsing the web looking into this, I figure my best bet is to go with Prepaid Debit Cards. They allow me to deposit onto the cards, and my users to simply withdraw or pay for things using that card. In fact, several of those services were mentioned in the post I linked before. These were mentioned:
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Payoneer: on paper their service looks good, but I have not yet received any reply to several inquiries made, their registration form is buggy, and their ‘news’ section mostly has news from 2008. All red flags to me.
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iKobo: another provider named in the other topic and at Wikipedia (for what it’s worth…). However, their SSL certificate is expired. Big red flag.
I’ve gone over most of the cards mentioned at this review site, but they all appear to be tailored to the US.
So my question is: does anybody know a good payment solution (could be Prepaid Debit Cards, could be something else) that is suitable for paying a wide audience of international users?
NOTE: these are mostly larger payments in the range of $100-500.
In the UK there are two providers: Caxton (Visa) and Fairfx (Mastercard). Their cards are called currency cards rather than prepaid debit cards, but I believe they are exactly what you are describing. Both are fully registered under UK financial law, so are reputable and reliable. Both are usable in a very wide range of countries. They are both usable in many, though not all ATMs (for instance in Thailand, they are usable in ATMs in local supermarkets, but not in local money changing kiosks). In addition to the problems @hol mentions about ATMs, in Asia in particular, local banks can, and do, choose to stop receiving payments from one of the two major networks – usually Mastercard – if there has been a high level of fraud on that network in that particular country.
I believe Caxton also offer a variety of money transfer options at low cost, but I have not used these services.
I have used both providers in travelling round 11 countries this year, mostly in the developing world, including Laos which has the least developed financial system of all the countries visited. They have provided a reliable and useful service. I have no other connection with either provider.