ePassporte...
Post-post Edit: This started as a simple question, which I was able to answer myself, and then turned into an informative post and then led to another couple of questions. So bear with me, but I think this could be a useful thread...
Fortunately, I haven't had to deposit money on any poker sites for a very long time. Back in the Neteller days, it was easy - I'd use that to quickly transfer money from one site to another when I needed to. Things have changed now though, and I'm wondering what most people use to deposit. I just opened a account and need to fund it.
Frankly, I haven't paid close attention to any of the depositing options threads, since they didn't concern me until now. I did a little research, and it seems like ePassporte is a good (the best?) option for U.S. citizens, anyway. I set up my account yesterday or maybe the day before, and just verified my bank account today. So far - quick and painless.
So now it's time to load it, and I see that there is an annoying $5 fee associated with a bank account transfer. This seems to be the case whether you are depositing $50, $500, or $5000, so I figured I should deposit a bunch of money all at once, rather than making multiple small deposits. But before I do, I want to make sure I'm not going to screw myself with hidden fees (like for withdrawing) that I'm not seeing right now.
Also, if I deposit today, it says the money won't be available for me to use until TWO Mondays from now, which is uberlame. And like I said, I'm not sure of all of their fees. I see the $5 load fee, but what about withdrawing? Or using the virtual visa (depositing at a poker site)? Are there charges for that?
It looks like for $35, they will send you a physical Visa debit card that you can use for B&M purchases or even withdraw funds at any ATM. That's pretty cool, but again, I wonder what kinds of fees we are talking about...
OK, just found some good info (I had to log off of their site to find this stuff - strange).
Load fees:
That's actually reasonable if you do it from your bank. This is annoying though, so I'll need to get this fixed:
P2P transfers are only 25 cents each, up to 5 per day. Receiving money is free of charge.
Ah, here is what I've been looking for, finally:
Again, I think those are very reasonable numbers.
So, all in all, I think epassporte looks like a very good option for those of us looking for a Neteller alternative. If that's true though, I can't help but wonder why people are always looking for money transfers and talking about prepaid gift cards and all that jazz. Am I missing something? Is there a good reason to deposit with some other method besides ePassporte?
Most importantly - for those of you who have been using ePassporte for a while, what are your experiences like? Would you recommend it?
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