Ikobo Review – my 2 cents

آخر تحديث : 25-05-2013 الساعة 08:02 م

Update > Important:

Ikobo closed its service. Do not subscribe with them. This post if left here only for archival purposes.
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If you are looking for an easy way to accept payments online, I recommend Ikobo. Unlike other merchant accounts, there is no charges to get an iKobo merchant account. Setup is free, and no hidden charges. Their discount rate is very low: 2.99% + $0.29 cents for each purchase. For example, if someone paid you $10, you get $9.41
They have unique features over paypal:

Instant money withdrawal
there is no need for checks. Instead, they mail you a free visa card, where you can cash your earnings from any ATM machine, anywhere in the world, in your local currency. Once someone pays you online, your account gets instantly funded with the new payment, so there is zero waiting for your earnings.

World-wide coverage
While paypal covers only 45 countries to date, iKobo covers virtually the whole world (over 170 countries) which takes your business to a new level, and opens new markets for your services, enabling you to open new frontiers, and sell services or merchandise to virtually anyone with an Internet connection.

Ikobo is growing rapidly, and they continue to improve their services all the time. They are currently allowing payments only by Visa cards, but they said Mastercard will be added soon. Recurring payment is also yet to be added, but they told me they are currently working on it and will soon be available. Their merchant tools are superb and very easy to use.
You get notified by email every time you receive a payment, with the amount, buyer’s name and email address, together with a handy text comment that the buyers are offered to type at the end of their payment process.

Signing up for your free merchant account takes minutes, and gets approved instantly, no papers to fax or documents to sign.

If you need a merchant account for your website or online business, click here to get a free account

4٬878 Comments

Hi there,

Just read your brief review of iKobo. I have not been able to find anyone who actually states in their reviews that they have received and used an iKard. May I ask if you have done so and successfully received and accessed funds? Your brief review is an excellent summary but tells me nothing I cannot find from their site. As I am conducting due diligence, I am attempting to find someone who has actually successfully used their service who will vouch for its authenticity.

Thanks and happy regards,

Bradley Hughes
http://www.EarnYourShare.com

Please read this review update:
http://my2cents.gawaher.com/2005/04/05/ikobo-terminated-all-merchant-accounts/
ikobo terminated its merchant services. To answer your question, yes, I did recieve and successfully used their ikard to withdraw cash from an ATM machine. It was a great service, but suddenly they recieved an order from Visa international to stop the service. And since Visa was their only payment option, there was nothing left and they had to terminate.

I have been using their services for about two years. Yes, I have (actually I had) their ATM card, but now it became useless for me.

One of the huge problems I ever got from them is when I tried to call their support service around one year ago. I tried to reach their service by phone for about 10-15 minutes. The problem was that they were swapping their old ATM cards with new ones and they didn’t send me my new PIN code (although they sent a new ATM card). I was down of their services completed. I then sent a bunch of emails to their e-mail address asking to send me my PIN code for the card, and you know – they did that as soon as I completely bombed them with my emails, telling to them that I’d post my negative feedbacks about their company through all the internet. I heard no “sorry” from their side after that. I remember I’ve got an email which contained something just like this:

> Dmitry: I have sent a lot of emails to you asking to send my new card PIN code. Please do that or I will set up the site to spread the real negative information about your services – I have reasons for that.

Ikobo: What??? Here it is: xxxx

Actually it was their only response, it all is concluded in the one word: “What???”.

Today I figured out they suspended my account because “I used it to receive money from people to whom I did some programming jobs” – they told this to me in the phone conversation. It was a very big surprise for me since I was awaiting to get the money from my client. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone to use their service.

Dmitriy or anyone else who is still reading this:

That seems unbelievable that they would suspend your card for such non-reason. What would be wrong with receiving money for programming jobs? Isn’t that the whole point of Ikobo? To receive money from other people.

If for some strange reason they only allow money to be sent as gifts and no business use that would be horrible.

My company http://www.bidera.com is looking to pay some out of US contract workers where Paypal or bank transfer is not an easy option.

If Ikobo does not allow to pay people for services rendered then they are pretty much useless.

Anyone has had any experience from senders side? How easy was it to raise the sending limit? I understand it is only $200 a month at first and you have to send in your first born child to have it increase