Using Moneybookers for your online poker deposits and withdrawals
This article was posted on September 10, 2009
The online poker industry has seen quite a bit of an explosion in recent years, but I believe that popularity explosion would've been even more significant had it not been for the various complicated and often frustrating deposit and withdrawal methods featured by most online poker rooms. Like it or not, if you intend to play real money poker and if you won't settle for a micro-bankroll attained through a freeroll, you'll have to make a deposit. Now then, how that deposit is made is what makes a world of difference when it comes to casual players.
For these guys (who probably make up a much bigger percentage of the player base of any online poker room than rooms and affiliates would like to admit) poker is a mere pastime. It's not something they want to make a living on, or even any kind of spending money for that matter. For these guys, being able to deposit and to withdraw simply and quickly and without paying ridiculous commissions is very important. If they can't take care of these financial issues effortlessly, they won't even bother to deposit in the first place.
This is where Moneybookers comes into the picture. Unlike various other deposit and withdrawal methods, Moneybookers makes depositing and withdrawing money from various online poker rooms a cinch. You only have to wait a few minutes or seconds for the money to land in your real money poker account, so you can pretty much start playing as soon as you decide you'd like to join the room.
Withdrawals should happen in a similarly smooth and instant manner, though that's not always the case because some poker rooms delay cash-outs for whatever reason. Again: if it takes three days for the poker room to transfer your withdrawal to your Moneybookers account, the delay is due to the room's policies and not to Moneybookers.
Uploading money into your Moneybookers account won't cost you a dime if you use the old fashioned bank transfer for it, it will cost you some small change if you use a credit card though, and having payments transferred into it will be free as well. You only have to pay a meager commission upon withdrawing funds from your Moneybookers account, but that fee is extremely small as well. It's a flat one, so it doesn't matter how much money you withdraw, you'll always pay around $2.8 for every withdrawal.
As a long time Moneybookers user I must say I'm quite pleased with the overall service package and the fact that I'm still using my account after all these years is living testimony to the fact that I haven't been able to locate a better eWallet yet.