Yes, here’s yet another new financial service vying for your attention. This time it’s RevolutionMoneyExchange, which is a person-to-person payment system similar to PayPal. It’s free to send, receive, and withdraw money, but the only funding source allowed is your bank account (no credit cards). It will be interesting to see if it gains some traction (and if eBay allows them as a payment option). Currently, they are offering a $25 bonus just for signing up. Here’s mine:
However, you’ll have to submit your Social Security Number to verify your identity, so I had to do a little digging first. According to this article in American Banker, it is backed by Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank AG, which participated in a $50 million venture capital round. The parent company was formed by bajillionaire Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO of AOL, and the son of the former CEO of Mastercard. Also mentioned in USA Today.
Also, there is no hard credit check done using your SSN. It says clearly at the top “This information is not used to review your credit history or to establish new credit.”
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Interesting… I hate eBay and Paypal fees.
It says “Account issued by First Bank & Trust, Brookings, SD, Member FDIC and part of the Fishback Financial Corporation.” Does it mean the accounts are FDIC insured?
You can send up to $1000 per day, and not to exceed $2500 per calendar month, through MoneyExchange.
Good question. It’s a bit confusing from their Help section:
Per the AccountHolder Agreement, it would seem like this is an “account” at a bank, but not a FDIC-insured savings or checking account. However, it is clear they are trying to imply that your money is going be safe and not invested in subprime loans or something.
Ah, Flooz and Beanz. Another source of bonus money in my pocket back in the day. I actually hope this one takes off though, I’m tired of accepting money from people funding via bank accounts and still having PayPal take a 3% cut.
No current Pinecone links, sorry. They come and go quickly.
Whatever happened to Flooz? What about Beans? 🙂
BTW, is there another link to take PineCone surveys? The one you posted doesn’t seem to work
is the referral bonus on top of the sign up bonus? 🙂
are they paying dividends for money thats parked there like paypal? or is it an account you would have to withdraw from often so you wont just have money seating there
I don’t get it, Paypal charges me nothing on my Personal acct. You gotta be vigilant on not accepting CC payments though. I have a buddy who just keeps two accounts, one pro, one personal. I see no benefit to this other than to get the free $25.
I’m interested in receiving a Revolution MoneyExchange referral. Thanks.
Why is everyone getting a 3% fee on paypal transactions? My roommate, some of my friends, a couple ppl at work – all complaining about paypal after I sing it’s praises….me and my buddies from college still use it after we meet up for ski trips. i thought this was only for biz accounts/transactions >$500?
I’m unclear as to why I would take the time to have you refer me in exchange for a vague *possible* offer, and a winky emoticon…
If you ever accept a credit card payment on PayPal, they “upgrade” your account to a premier account (from a basic account). After that, they start charging you 3 % even on noncredit-card transactions. I think you may be able to call them to have your account “downgraded” to a basic account so noncredit-card transactions are free, but I’ve heard that they will only downgrade your account once.
Josefismael,
Paypal fees are listed here: link
If you have a personal account you should only be charged fees if it is cross currency or if the payment is made with debit card, credit card, or other credit. If paid out of paypal account balance no fee is taken out.
Business accounts will be charged around 2-3% when receiving payment no matter how it is paid.
So if it is free to send, receive, and withdraw, how are they making money?
In order to accept credit card transactions, one must convert their account from the “free” variety to a premier/business account. Those accounts can accept credit transactions, but for that privilege all incoming transactions are subject to a 2-3% transaction fee.
I think at some point Paypal added the option to accept a limited number of transactions (5 per year) on the basic account with a high transaction fee (5% + $0.30).
So, basically, I won’t ever accept any credit card transactions through paypal.
Can’t begin to say how easy this whole process was.
Requested the referral link today -hopefully one of the first 50; set up the account; and Boom – a cool $25 in my account.
Thanks,
cp
I’m not willing to give up bank account info and a social to a relatively new company yet. I recently had a credit card compromised and someone was making purchases on it in Brazil…I’ve never been to Brazil. So now I’m reluctant about giving up any information.
On another note, FICO is changing the way they do FICO scores. The new scoring model will make is to you’re penalized less for 1 late payment every so often and being added as an authorized user will no longer help you but can hurt you if the other person starts missing payments.
Anyone else have trouble setting up an account? I now have $45 in my account I’d like to “accept” but they couldn’t create my account due to their inability to verify my information. I did recently move so perhaps that is the problem.
I called them and they said to await email instruction in the next 48 hours as to how they will be verifying my information.
Whew! Everyone who requested a referral should have one on the way. Please look within the e-mail for a personal message from me and a link for some extra goodness. I’ve got 50 people and then some, thanks! Several people already have their $25 from the looks of it.
Regarding PayPal, it’s very very hard to maintain a personal account when you accept a lot of payments, even if you set up both a biz and personal account. Inevitably one person will send a credit card payment to your personal account despite your instructions, and then you’re forced to be a business account w/ fees or deal with a ton of hassle. You can downgrade back to personal once, but that’s it. Also I think with Personal you can only send $500 a month or so.
I’d also like to add that the only thing that makes me think this is a scam is the URL — who is going to frequently type all those letters?!
Who’ll be the quickest to buy RevMoneyEx.com?
let’s just hope more and more people sign up and use it on eBay.
Brian, I had the same problem. They could not verify me. When I called they told me they were having problems and to wait for an e-mail in 48 hours.
Thanks, got my invite, signed up, and have my $25 already.
I really see no advantage of this over PayPal. Yes the fees but since it is only free between MoneyExchange users, there really is no benefit.
Before signing up, I’d take a careful look at their privacy policy (link)
And I’d be sure I was comfortable with their opt-out policy.
WOW. After reading the privacy policy, I strongly, violently encourage everyone to AVOID THIS SERVICE AT ALL COST. It is most certainly NOT worth the $25. RUN AWAY!
Thanks, Flagship. I think you’re on to something. I was going to sign up, but now that I see how they want to sell my personal information and make it difficult for me to opt-out, I’m not going to do it. Even if I signed up and mailed the opt-out notice right away, there would be a lag time when they had full freedom to disclose my personal info, and I’m not comfortable with that.
“PARTIES TO WHOM WE DISCLOSE
We may disclose nonpublic personal information about you to affiliates and nonaffiliated third parties, including:
* Financial service providers, such as mortgage bankers, loan companies, securities broker-dealers, and insurance agents;
* Non-financial companies such as retailers, direct marketers, airlines, and publishers; and
* Others, such as non-profit organizations.
From time to time, we may also tell you about special offers from unrelated companies that we think may interest you. These companies will not learn about your relationship with us unless you respond to their offers. We may also disclose nonpublic personal information about you to affiliates and nonaffiliated third parties as permitted by law.”
Regarding Privacy- under INFORMATION WE DISCLOSE is says, “You may opt out of the disclosure of such information, other than as permitted by law.” Here’s an idea, click the “opt out” box- there’s an FDIC insured bank involved- do you have any idea how restricted banks are from spamming? They’re so restricted with their marketing- why do you think they have to give toasters away?
The privacy policy is definitely very broad, but I compared with PayPal’s privacy policy and it’s very similar. You can opt out of both, although with PayPal you can do it online whereas here you need to mail in a form. In the meantime, use a spam e-mail address if possible, or one like gmail with a good spam filter. I already get tons of junk snail mail no matter what I do.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I have my own website and included with that is unlimited email addresses. If I question something, I just setup an additional email address with the name of the offer right in it and forward that to my real email address. So, that way the confirmation emails come through and I can turn off (mail server setting to discard email) that email address any time I want and reactivate it any time I want if later I need to do something.
Personally it sounds to me like they just want to leave things open so no one will sue them. I mean really, anyone can put anything they want in their agreement and put the one statement that the agreement can be ‘changed at any time’ and still do whatever they want. Unscrupulous companies on the internet would NEVER be held back by a privacy policy.
i like a referral please. thanks.
To double-check my assumptions, I dug up my privacy policies from various Visa’s and Mastercard’s (the ones printed on super-thin paper).
They are almost exactly the same, with the collected info and opt-out policy. Being aware of privacy is good, but if you think this is “shocking” you might want to see if you have a Visa or Mastercard in your wallet. They also make you opt out by mail (which I have done at times) after you apply and receive the card.
Hmm, their site seems to be down. Think that’s significant?
The service seems promising… For personal transactions it seems nice (no fees). PayPal is obviously much more established, however. The ability to tie PayPal with back-end systems through their API is important, and they’re still less expensive than getting a merchant account to accept credit card payments.
It makes me a bit nervous though, that to opt out, you have to write out your social security number and mail it to them. What’s up with that? Why don’t they just ask for your login name?
To Chris and Jonathan,
I saw Pinecone’s banner on Slickdeal.net if you’re still interested.
I don’t know what Jeremy is talking about. The privacy policy is completely standard. Plus, its backed huge banks, business men and additionally the FDIC.
I signed up and got my $25 easy. I can’t wait to use this instead of paypal.
When I tried to sign up for an account, I was informed that MoneyExchange was unable to verify my identity and would be contacting me by either email or snail mail to tell me what the next step is. Has this happened to anyone else? I wouldn’t be too surprised if I never hear from them… maybe too many people tried to take advantage of the signup bonus and they’ve already got enough users to begin testing their service.
This sounds like competition for ebay and obopay. Send me the referral link please. Thanks.
Well, here is what I find disturbing. On the homepage, it says:
“Your email address and personal information are confidential and will not be sold or rented.”
However, if you click on the privacy policy it says as TwoPenniesEarned mentions above AND it defines “information we collect” as:
“** Information we receive from you, including information on applications or other forms, such as your name, address, social security number, assets and income;
**Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others, such as your account balance, transaction and payment history, parties to transactions, and credit card usage; and
**Information we receive from a consumer reporting agency, such as your creditworthiness and credit history.”
So which is correct? Are they going to sell/rent my info or not??
Paypal’s privacy is vastly superior and you can opt out of information sharing online. That you must opt-out via mail is my main beef with this service.
i’d like a referral please. thanks!
I have been waiting for them to verify my bank account with the 2 small deposits for over 5 buisness days now. I wnat to withdraw my $55. has anyone been able to withdraw money yet?
Andy – Just use the link in the post, you can get your $25.
Bill – I only got a small percentage of my referral bonuses, and they still haven’t replied to my help requests. However, I have both verified and taken out the money they did give me.
tried opening account thru your referral…2 weeks later, account isn’t opened even after sending information they have asked for
calls / email to their help line gets me nothing but patronizing apologies and excuses; the last one even kept on deflecting the problem of their inefficiency telling me their e-mails must be getting to my junk mail box; this rep Jan was so dense…i have told her am already getting their e-mail telling me to refer friends before i even have an account established
perhaps $25 is worth some effort but not like this kind which appears to be HOAXlike! the initial $25 “sent” by Jason Hogg has even disappeared from the dashboard for validation! very frustrating…and they want you to refer them???
ben:
I had an account that need extra verification and it finally got setup this morning. Your $25 “sent” by Jason Hogg is still there. You have to click on the view all transaction tab to see it. The Dashboard defaults to only showing 1 week of activity at a time. So it’s still there. You have to look beyond the default date range.
Willbert:
All I can say is…u are lucky to finally get your account and $25. I got another email yesterday and put off getting annoyed until now. Still got the same frustrating blah…blah…blah
And they still want to be referred to “friends”. Perhaps this business model – whatever it is – is crumbling, they just want to annoy as many as they can along the way!
I’ll take one! After hearing of the terrible things Ebay is doing with their fees, I’m walking away from PayPal. (Yes, even though a family member works there.) I just can’t stand the fees anymore.
Still offering the friend referrals?
“Consumers can set up a free Revolution MoneyExchange account in just minutes by registering at http://www.revolutionmoneyexchange.com, and start transferring money to friends, family, or merchants.”
This is not true. I’ve been trying to get an account set up since Mar 1, 2008 and can get nothing but the run around. No replies to my e-mails. They have all of my information and I even supplied them with more information than the basic info requested. STILL I can not access my account. Site seems rather glitchy. Or is it a scam? I don’t know since I can’t get past step 1!
Please help!
I signed up for this program. How do I receive the $10 bonus from the people I refer? How does this part work?
Last month they laid off 17 people. Today they laid off 20. That is a small staff to support the large executive presence.
They have not spent the money right. Bloated executive salaries and relocation. This would be a solid case study for a business school.
Revolution Money is going under. They have run out of money. The Board of Directors and Executive Management are to blame. The Board tried to drive accounts with a huge marketing spend. This is typical of AOL where the business model was to drive accounts and not take care of the customer.
One problem was they didn’t take care of the customer or look for long-term value and the user interface required an overhaul or temporary band-aids. None of which were done. The online interface was actually an AOL-esque application and not a web-based interface.
Online issues were identified early yet there was no course correction. The senior management and directors did not have experience with an immature online business that needed to take care of the customer. Directors and VPs were hired who had little or no online experience. Several VPs was upset that they did not have a secretary to manage their schedule.
While the business model was solid, the executive management did not have the expertise to run an integrated online and direct marketing campaign. While their response will be – failure was caused by an economic downturn, this is far from the truth. For example, the executives gold-plated the IT operation, installed it and then saw funds were low and fired all the contractors who helped install this. Worse, the Executives purchased the new Mac Air Notebooks when their PC laptops were just fine. Proven web strategies were ignored in favor of driving accounts. Priorities were ever shifting and became a running joke amongst the staff.
This failure will be a great study for B-Schools. Also, the lessons of the Internet business in the late nineties and 2000 were ignored. For example, how to burn through 80 million dollars.
I personally threw up a little in my mouth reading all the “positives” about PayPal. I’ve had nothing but trouble with them and so have friends, relatives and business acquaintances. Dealing with them, however, is a necessary evil since I sell on ebay. I did sign up with Revolution money and have never had any problems with them. I like the idea of not having to pay a ton of fees and looking at it it’s a lot like a bank since they do charge you the standard $35 for a returned check.
The problem with this is the vast majority of people will never use it and therefore it won’t be big enough to progress and offer more. Sad really, I’m getting sick of giving my money away to “legal” thieves” and huge companies who couldn’t care less about me and my money but only how to keep theirs.