Paypal’s Not-So-Perfect Alternative In Pakistan

Hey Chaps,

If you remember, a while ago, I did a post on barriers to earning money online in pakistan. Before moving forward, let me tell you that this is not only for those who’re living in Pakistan and simply can’t sign-up to Paypal.

This is also for those from the gulf states or other countries that are not supported by Paypal. Or simply if you’re one of those people who’re sick of paypal and got your account suspended on Paypal with 1000’s of dollars (It happens a lot!).

I’d like to tell you about Alertpay. It is a pretty renowned online payment processor, perhaps the second best. Correct me if I’m wrong. I compared it to other common ones like moneybookers, payoneer, e-gold, etc.

Payment Transfer Reliability

I’ve been using alertpay for around a year now. Recently, I’ve been receiving and making payments with Alertpay with no problems. However, around the first quarter of of 2009 I did experience some disruptions in their service.

For around 2 months, alertpay was unable to accept any credit card payments, although payments to and from alertpay accounts could be done but credit card involvement was not possible. This did hinder a bit of my activities.

But then again, that is still better compared to not being able to do anything. My account is in complete function for pretty long now as I’ve been receiving and making paymenmts.

Getting Verified
This is the biggest part of using any online payment processor because if you want to add or withdraw funds, you need to be verified with the payment processor. Well, prior to signing up with them, I talked to many pakistanis with verified accounts so that I could be assured.

However, I sent them scanned copies of the documents required to verify my account. It said that it would require 30 business days to process it. As of today, it has been over 90 days and still no luck.

I think that the problem at their end is that their user base is increasing at a constant speed and it is becoming hard for them to cater for all those users. So normally, you’d have to wait in a ‘queue’ until you get verified. That’s how I interpret it.

My Paypal Vs. Alertpay Comparison
To be honest, my main usage of an online payment processor is something like this:

Receive money in my account from clients, etc.
Spend that money on something that I want to buy.
So, in this way, if I have a fake paypal account (showing residence in any random country) and I can send and receive money with it if you don’t get verified after a while. However, after some while, for no apparent reason, Paypal totally freezes your account until you verify.

However, in Alertpay, I have selected my real country and all information is real. My account is legitimate. I can send and receive payments. The only problem that exists is that it is taking pretty long for them to verify my account.

If my account gets verified then I can add / withdraw funds as well, which would just be a plus for me. In fact, I think that maybe you can add funds even if you’re unverified but just can’t withdraw them.

Overall, I think that there are only two problems with alertpay at the moment:

They need to speed up their verification process.
They need to attract more online merchants to start using Alertpay as a payment method to give us more flexibility in spending online.
Other than that, all in all, Alertpay is a great payment processor. A savior in my case, after I got dumped by Paypal. What’s that? That’s another long story.

I’ll be ranting about that in a few days to warn off all those who’re using unverified paypal accounts and how dangerous it is for your money.