PayPal alternatives in Egypt - Part 2

In part one of this post, I listed three online payment services that work in Egypt. I compared between the them to see which one suits my needs. The scenario I'm using is when a user is paying me money using his/her own credit card. You can see the comparison in the table below. The values in the table can be used only for reference because different options are available in each site with different fees.

	2CheckOut.com	AlertPay.com	MoneyBookers.com
Account setup fee	$49 *	-	-
Monthly fee	-	-	$19.99 **
Fixed transaction fee	$0.45 ***	$0.25 ***	$0.35 ***
% transaction fee	5.5% ***	4.9% ***	3.9% ***
Currency exchange fee	-	2.5%	-
Withdrawal fees	Wire $10 Check $4	Wire $15 Check $4 Credit Card $5	Wire €1.8 ~ $2.7
Users paying money need to sign in	No	Yes	No

^* Sign up is free but account setup fee is to be paid before transactions are made.

^** Only if you use website payment gateway; using payment to email address is free.

^*** Default fee; fee actually varies according to account type and/or website content.

Here is a quick example of what your account will be credited if you receive a payment of $10 and $100, assuming the following:

1- Setup and monthly fees are excluded

2- Default transaction fees are applied

3- Money is kept in your online account and not yet withdrawn to bank account

	2CheckOut.com	AlertPay.com	MoneyBookers.com
$10	$9.00	$9.26	$9.26
$100	$94.05	$94.85	$95.75

PayPal alternatives in Egypt

I did some research looking for PayPal alternatives that work in Egypt. This means you can withdraw money from your online balance into a bank account in Egypt. This can be useful if you want to exchange money with someone outside Egypt (like when you do a freelancing job), or to accept payments on your website.

I found the services below but I still didn't try any of them:

1. 2CheckOut
2. AlertPay
3. MoneyBookers

Update: check more details in part 2 of the post.

Update 2: If you're looking for an alternative to PayPal to use it with eBay, then MoneyBookers is the way to go. I tried it and could successfully pay using my account that is linked to my credit card issued in Egypt. The biggest issue with eBay in Egypt remains to be shipping availability and cost.

VirtaPay

VirtaPay is a virtual currency site. I've been a member for some time now and kept wondering if it will actually go live or will just be another prank. They have a very active reward program for "early bird" users. The down side is that until now, you can't do much with money you earn.


This is about to change in the following days with the introduction of "Digital Delivery" project. This will enable users to buy digital content using their credit. If this actually works as expected, I'll be able to stop wondering.

http://www.virtapay.com/

Egypt...

Yes, this is where this blog is coming from.

While I'm not interested in blogging about politics and current events (and believe me there is a lot going on these days in here), some of the contents of the blog will be about life in Egypt.

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt

Country profile by BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/737642.stm

Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=egypt&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Egypt&ll=29.916852,31.201172&spn=19.740509,43.286133&z=5

My brain dump

I thought this blog would be helpful to dump some thoughts and ideas. Maybe somebody finds them helpful or at least I'll know where to find them later :)