Payoneer recently introduced their new withdrawal method ‘Payoneer Withdraw to Bank Service’ to some of their cardholders. Although it’s still a pilot program, I had chance to join and make a withdrawal. It was fast and easy. But I wasn’t impressed with the result
Withdraw to bank service was initially unavailable to me. I looked up my account but didn’t find option to withdraw fund to my bank account. So I contacted support at community@payoneer.com and asked if it can be enabled for me. They told me that it can’t be enabled for my main partner program. I asked them to change my main partner program so I can benefit from this awesome service. After exchanging few emails, service was enabled to me.
I usually withdraw my funds at an ATM. Having them sent directly to my bank account is even easier. So I was excited. I went ahead and requested my first withdrawal to bank account. It was accepted and processed within 48 hours. It took another 24 hours for funds to appear in my bank account. I was very happy with the process. It was fast. But only thing wrong with the transaction was, it was missing $40. People at bank had no idea what happened to it.
This wasn’t a mystery for me since this was the second time something like this happened to me. While back, I tried sending my earnings at ero-adverting directly to my bank account. Same thing happened. Final amount received to my bank account was missing €10. The explanation I got was that funds have to come through several banks/agents and all their fees were deducted from the amount.
I’m pretty sure something very similar has happened with my Payoneer withdrawal. Although it might be out of Payoneer’s control, they should at least give a warning about these fees.
The transaction ended costing me around $60. It was very expensive and unacceptable. I can’t take it after all the other fees I have to go through as a freelancer. An ATM withdrawal fee for same amount should be less than $25. And it’s faster. So I don’t see a point why I should be using withdraw to bank service again.
But that’s me. Fees for other countries may be cheaper. But you must be willing to take the risk since no one seems to have a clear idea about how much it’s going to cost. And I hope it’ll be cheaper than this for me someday since I really want to use this service. Until then I’ll be a happy Payoneer card holder who withdraw funds at an ATM.
Now don’t take me wrong. I don’t hate Payoneer. In fact I love them. I’m just giving some heads up for my fellow freelancers. So before ending this post, I would like to say that I’m using my Payoneer card every month to get paid. I probably will be for very long time. And I would like to thank Payoneer for trying to improve their service. And hope they’ll keep adding new features.
