Very important and bad news by Escrow.com

[AbdulBasit.com]

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

It looks like Escrow.com is getting worse as the time goes by… After we all heard about Payoneer Escrow getting shut down so I started again Escrow.com which I had stopped due to their poor service.

I started couple of transactions at Escrow.com in a period of one week both for different domain and buyers. One of the transaction got completed on 30th August with last status “Inspection period ended, Buyer accepts merchandise.”

On 3rd September, I receive an email from their Payments department which says the following:

“Dear Seller, Unfortunately we do not support disbursement to accounts under First Century Bank, Payoneer accounts, or any other third party payments service. Please kindly select or add a new disbursement method. Please inform us when your disbursement information has been updated.”

This came as shocking to me. First, they should have at least informed all their clients that they no longer support disbursement to accounts under First Century Bank and/or Payoneer accounts. Secondly, even if they didn’t bother sending emails to every of their concerned client, they could’ve updated somewhere in the middle of transaction whenever they got aware of this new changes at their end. But their so-called great support team didn’t bother to inform and waited for the transaction to get completed.

I’m forced to complete my second transaction with them as the buyer just said yesterday that payment have been already made so I’m waiting for this to be completed as well. I just didn’t wanted to receive funds via wire that’s why I started Escrow.com to receive funds via Payoneer.

Instead of improving their service, they’re getting worse as the time is passing. Now I shall be looking for better alternatives who not only support payment via Payoneer but also other options like PayPal.

I’m sure there are plenty of domainers who likes to receive funds via Payoneer and are using Escrow.com so please make sure to either change your funds disbursement method or start using another better escrow service.

Now I’ve sent an email today for disbursing my funds via wire option which is the only one left for me to choose.

**NOTE** In past, I've received good amount of funds in Payoneer account/card through Escrow.com several times.

It would be great to hear from fellow domainers which escrow service is very reliable, provides great customer support and offers several disbursement methods including at least Payoneer.

 

[MapleDots]

After we all heard about Payoneer Escrow getting shut down

I heard about them closing the service but I'm not sure what you mean by they got shut down.

Can you point me to a direction where that information is?
I am very interested in reading it.

Here is my take on this whole thing......

I send a bill of sale to my client which they have to sign and send back. They fill in a credit card number and I process it in house. I do this for anything up to 50k assuming the client has the credit limit.

It costs me about 2% in processing fees but it gets me my money right away.
With the signed bill of sale I am protected for any chargebacks because it expressly mentions this is a final sale and the client agrees to no chargebacks.

I have been processing my own transactions for 5 years now and will probably not go back to any online service.

I had a few very big sales and processed those through my lawyer to assure everything went smoothly and we did those deals very similar to a real estate transaction.

I much prefer the one on one with my clients anyone who has their own credit card processing machine will probably agree that it is the best and easiest option. It is EXTREMELY important that you have a signed bill of sale where the client fills in the credit card information because that closes any loops. I once had a client attempt a chargeback and the money went to a holding account and once I provided the bill of sale the bank promptly released the funds back to me.

 

[frank-germany]

you may use sedo escrow instead
just don't forget to delete the domain from sedo
before starting the escrow

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Most or all of the financial institutions do not support third party payments. its against security protocol.
In case of any fraud it will be difficult to trace the funds.

That's fine. The thing is when they're offering it for long time, they should have informed. No update, nothing from them unless the transaction was completed. Just last month I completed a deal of CosmoChem.com for $7000 which they sent funds via Payoneer. If there were any changes, it's their duty to inform.

 

[meslam479]

undeveloped escrow works great for me

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

You may ask escrow.domains
They are based in the USA...
So American ACH to Payoneer should work there... if no restrictions by their rules regarding First Century Bank.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

5% for lead
I do wiring money directly to my bank account and Paypal payments to my Payoneer account so didn't try Payoneer with undeveloped yet.

Still 5% is on higher side considering just the escrow fee.

I've contacted both escrow.domains and transpact.com to see if they send fund to Payoneer account.

Will update here accordingly.

 

[MapleDots]

could you please tell us, what service you use for processing your own transactions

I use a company called Elavon and I signed up through Costco in Canada, I know they offer it in the US as well. It really does not matter what company you go with but I got excellent rates by going with Costco Merchant and because I run 5 companies I use the same processing service for all of them.

I do 1.5 million per year from one online store alone and that costs me about $3000 per month in processing fees. So to add on a number of domain sales is no big deal for me and it makes it quite efficient.

 

[Brandon Abbey]

I believe that escrow.com made the decision they no longer wanted to allow Payoneer users to receive funds from them. I am sure someone from the company can clarify this.

 

[DeliDomains]

Most or all of the financial institutions do not support third party payments. its against security protocol.
In case of any fraud it will be difficult to trace the funds.

 

[DeliDomains]

That's fine. The thing is when they're offering it for long time, they should have informed. No update, nothing from them unless the transaction was completed. Just last month I completed a deal of CosmoChem.com for $7000 which they sent funds via Payoneer. If there were any changes, it's their duty to inform.

I agree here, if they were providing this service before, they need to inform their customer of the changes.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

https://www.namepros.com/threads/escrow-com-last-move.1084172/

Strange to see they stopped sending funds to Payoneer because I received around $7,000 just last month itself.

But they informed me in last few days that they've stopped sending funds to Payoneer.

Crazy things going over at Escrow.com

They should be professional enough to inform their customers.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Seems I was out of the loop and missed this news... what happened? Shut down by whom? Or was this Payoneer's own decision to discontinue their escrow service?

Why not set up an offshore company in a business friendly jurisdiction (like Hong Kong) and accept payments with few limitations? Not to mention, tax free

You may check here - https://www.namepros.com/threads/ve...ews-by-escrow-com.1098910/page-2#post-6882297

About tax free, domain income in my country is already tax free

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

never used payoneer

but seems they have some responsibility to inform users that they can't accept payments from escrow anymore.

imo…..

I think it's the responsibility of Escrow.com to inform their clients that they no longer support of sending funds to Payoneer accounts.

 

[wizard]

escrow.com has always been bad would never use them such a bad service

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Payoneer can't care less whether Escrow decides to stop sending money to them, or not. It's on Escrow.

Payoneer can also block/reject the incoming payment...
They monitor all such transactions... and don't accept them from anybody and from anywhere.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Interesting. I was not aware that Pakistan's tax system was territorial (i.e. foreign derived income of residents of no interest to your tax authorities).

Every kind of businesses have to pay taxes but in order to promote IT sector in our country, tax is exempted on domains business.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Sedo escrow is good except Bulk sales...
They support only single domain transactions...
So if 2 or more domains to the same buyer - then 2+ separate transactions should be started and will be 2+ commissions and 2+ separate wires (15 EUR each)...
True idiotism...

+ when rechecking my bank statement I always see the exact domain names in comments for those transactions...
So lack of privacy... especially if you sell Adult domains etc.

I already asked Sedo a few times - but still no changes, should be more requests from other domainers as well...

 

[Chris Wright]

Selling your domain in the Epik marketplace is a secure transaction.
Once your buyer pays, Epik transfers the domain instantly, and disburses seller's funds instantly.

For real escrow service, the fee is 1.5% of transaction amount, with a $75 minimum.
However, funds are disbursed as Epik MasterBucks, which can be used inside Epik for no fees, or cashed out for a %5 fee.
Essentially a 6.5% fee, but I believe their security and service are unmatched.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

@AbdulBasit.com
Kindly check out transferwise.com prehaps their service may be of help.
I haven't used them yet, only got to know about them while trying to come up with hand regs last year .
From what I learnt they offer a boarderless (global) account from which you can spend, send and receive money around the world. Their US account has a ACH routing number, maybe such account can receive funds via ACH.

Don't take my word for it though, please do your own due diligence about the ACH. You can never say, they could have one or two services that may meet domainers' needs.

Thank you!
I just went ahead and created an account. Will give it a try and if it works fine, I'll update here.

 

[poweredbyme]

@AbdulBasit.com try marketplaces that send payouts in BTC or account balance. I use namesilo for this purpose. If I withdraw as account balance I use the funds in renewals, new registrations and buying domains from namesilo marketplace, if I withdraw in BTC, I convert it into fiat or spend for hosting or buying domains and websites. BTC is accepted by many sellers. I rarely convert BTC into fiat to buy something online such as hosting.

Another marketplace that know is undeveloped. They claim they send payouts in BTC. I don't know how it works. You can keep your cash in BTC to buy new domains, can sell BTC to receive cash in your currency.

I heard epik accepts BTC but didn't try it, don't know if they send payouts in BTC.

Here on NP forums, we need a thread to be opened to get a list of all the domain marketplaces that send payouts in BTC. It would be very beneficial to the NP community.

 

[Shahid7]

@Jurgen Wolf
which UAE bank do you recommend?

Mashreq Bank is good and is quite fast too, Emirates NBD on the other hand is not bad also since both are modern banks and the rise of Crypto is seen here too as the govt wants to implement Blockchain for Govt related payments as well

I personally use Masreq.

 

[Embrand]

While all my recent transactions at Escrow.com have been smooth, they could indeed improve their communications. For example, recently they suddenly changed the bank account I needed to wire funds to without informing beforehand.

Although it seems it is still possible to wire funds to their old account, it is confusing that with every transaction they switch between two different banks now.

 

[kamcreation]

Yes payoneer escrow was really nice, still searching for the perfect alternative, in situations where paypal is not available, payoneer is the best option to receive funds.

So can anyone tell which marketplaces or escrow services allow payment to payoneer account?

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Why to not use wire to your domestic bank? This SWIFT disbursement costs $20 at escrow.com
Or they don't send to PK at all?