epassporte - help!

[Chilihost]

I am being forced into getting an epassporte account now that more and more places can't pay via paypal, so I went to check it out and it is a bit confusing to set things up. I need help and I can't find any help on their site. Hopefully someone can help out on some/all of these questions:

I am assuming I should set up a personal account? I am just opening it to receive payments from other affiliate programs.
Do I have to load the account with $50 when I just want to use it to receive funds? Is there any way around this?
Can I withdraw funds without spending it, ie, can they transfer a credit to a bank or even to paypal. If yes, does anyone know the fees for this?

Thanks,
Luke

[BDBionic]

Rand @ Epoch would know all of this. Unfortunately the time difference between here and Oz has him outta the office while you're here hehe.
I'm sure if you sent him a PM though (he's on this board as "Rand") he'd help ya out ASAP.

[Chilihost]

Thanks, I sent them an email too so one way or another I will get this sussed.

cheers,
Luke

[raymor]

How you can withdraw money depends on what country you are in.
Whgat thing you can't do is withdraw from epassporte to PayPal.
It might at first seem that you could use
your ePass virtual Visa to to do that,
but PayPal won't accept that virtual Visa.
In the United States you can withddraw money either
by sending it to someone or have them
mail you a check.

They charge 5% to load your account, which is
way too much in my opinion.

The easy way around all of this is to use me.
I have accounts with Paypal, ePassporte, Moneybookers, etc.
I also accept credit cards and people can send me
checks or money orders.
What I do for several webmasters is accept payments for them into one of my accounts
and then pay them via some other service or
pay their bills for them.
For you, I could accept your ePassporte payments
and then pay you via PayPal, or pay your hosting bill
or whatever.

One Australian guy who sells on eBay has US
buyers send the chesk or money orders to me,
then I pay is hosting bill.
Another guy can't get a payPal account, so he
sends me money via ePass and I send it to the people
he needs to pay via PayPal.
I get 2% for this service.

I can be reached via email at support@webmastersguide.com on ICQ at 7206627.
If you have someone send me a payment ask them to
include a note about where I should forward it to,
if they can. That just makes it easier than having
to look it up.

[Chilihost]

interesting...I will keep you in mind! thanks for the offer & the info.

cheers,
Luke

[Lee]

Luke,

I beleive ARS can set you up a free epassporte account if you select that as a payment option (at least as i recall thats what they did for me) youll have a card sent out too if you opt to have one that you can use to withdraw funds from any ATM / Cashpoint that has the Visa sign displayed

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Lee

[rand]

Originally posted by Chilihost
I am being forced into getting an epassporte account now that more and more places can't pay via paypal, so I went to check it out and it is a bit confusing to set things up. I need help and I can't find any help on their site. Hopefully someone can help out on some/all of these questions:

I am assuming I should set up a personal account? I am just opening it to receive payments from other affiliate programs.
Do I have to load the account with $50 when I just want to use it to receive funds? Is there any way around this?
Can I withdraw funds without spending it, ie, can they transfer a credit to a bank or even to paypal. If yes, does anyone know the fees for this?

Thanks,
Luke

Luke,

Thanks for your post. I'll try to clear things up for you. By the way, the site is undergoing redesign as we speak to make it more user friendly. Will be up and going very soon.

In order to receive funds from a sponsor, or to send/receive funds from any other ePassporte personal account holder, all you need is a personal account. There are a couple of ways to get one. A) Some sponsor programs will give you an account. They in turn will push your payouts to your eP account. B) You can obtain an account on your own. This currently requires you to fund the account (minimum of $50) by Visa or MasterCard. A virtual account is $5 but that fee is waived on your initial load. You can add a Visa Electron card to the account for $35 which will allow you to withdraw your money at any ATM in the world which accepts Visa or is on the PLUS network.

Currently, there are a few ways to move funds from the account and more coming soon. You can withdraw funds from an ATM or transfer them to other eP account holders, or, spend the money using the Visa functionality. You can send funds to any other eP account holder in the world for less than the cost of a stamp (25 cents) and the transfer is instant. Checks and wires are so last century. Further, you may send funds to anyone via email using the Gift Card option.

ePassporte truly has a lot of functionality and if there are other features that anyone would like to suggest, we'll incorporate anything that makes sense and stays within all the banking rules. Drop me a line.

[Chilihost]

Rand & Lee, thanks for those responses. Both of them BEAT THE HELL out of the email chat I just had with epassporte's support:

my original email:
help...(kinda the same as my first post here)

epassporte response:

Dear Epassporte Cardholder:

In order for us to better assist you, can you please contact our sales department @ 1 (310) 301-6446

We apologize for the inconvenience, for further assistance please contact us.

Regards,

Katherine

my response:

Thanks, but as mentioned the problem is that you are in the USA and I am in Australia, it is difficult to phone during your business hours and expensive too. Email correspondence is a lot easier, can you please respond via email?

Thanks,
Luke

their response:

Dear Epassporte Cardholder:

In order for us to better assist you, can you please contact our sales department @ 1 (310) 301-6446 or you can email them at sales@epassporte.com

We apologize for the inconvenience, for further assistance please contact us.

Regards,

Katherine

great support - NOT!

cheers,
Luke

[Lee]

Luke,

Have to say that is one of the main problems companies encounter with call centres

Do yourself a favor and cut out the middle men shoot an email off directly to:

amparo.alcarez @ epassporte.com

She has ALWAYS been very helpful in the past with me

Regards,

Lee

[Chilihost]

thanks, lee, I will do that!

cheers,
Luke