Skrill is our top recommendation for placing online bets. Its fast, relativley cheap and widely accepted. Here you will find our complete review.
Formerly known as Moneybookers, Skrill is one of the biggest web wallets out there, and whilst it has remained in the shadows of the mighty PayPal for a number of years, it is no longer considered a niche provider and is doing its best to play catch up. In fact, Skrill now generates an annual revenue of close to $350 million, which is incredibly impressive considering its humble beginnings. Although it does have some way to go to catch up to the $8 billion that PayPal makes every year.
So, why is Skrill able to stand up against PayPal? After all, you would have thought that PayPal had this market cornered and that they had eliminated the need for any other provider. Well, that’s simply not true, and not only do many customers think so, but so do many e-commerce websites and gambling websites. That’s why sites like Unibet, one of the biggest gambling sites in the world, accepts Skrill, but not PayPal. And today Skrill is much more accepted than Paypall for online bookmakers.
Many customers use Skrill because the fees are cheaper, but whilst that is partially correct, PayPal is actually cheaper across the board. For instance, on Skrill you will pay a smaller fee to use a credit card and for a p2p transaction from US accounts, but you will also be charged to send money, to keep an inactive account open and even to create an account, and all of these are free on PayPal.
As far as security goes, both of these sites are very secure and it would be difficult if not impossible to work out which was better in that regard. That leaves us with two options: customer service and availability, and in both regards Skrill is considerably better than PayPal.
If you have a question for PayPal, you will struggle to get an answer from them. You can email them, you can try and find a live chat feature and if you’re a very brave and optimistic person, you can even try to call them. Very little works and the phrase “banging your head against a brick wall” will come to mind. However, Skrill are much easier to contact. You could argue that this is down to their size and that because they are much smaller then PayPal they are able to devote more time to this particular area, but that should never be an excuse. Apple are one of the biggest companies in the world, and they have some of the best and most responsive customer support around. PayPal are just really poor in this area, no excuses, and Skrill are leagues ahead of them.
Of course, that customer service isn’t flawless, but at least you are able to get a response, to get an answer to a question and a solution to a problem. That can be the difference between staying and leaving for many customers and it is why Skrill is generally considered to be more user friendly.
The other positive, and perhaps the main positive as far as we are concerned, is that Skrill is available on every gambling site out there, or at least it seems to be. We have yet to encounter a site that does not accept Skrill, which makes it incredibly versatile and means it is also perfect to store your bankroll. Simply load money into your Skrill account and then use that to gamble on however many sites you want. Comes in handy given that not many bookies takes on esport bets just yet.
Skrill is also trying out quicker ways to let you post directly with cards to an online bookamker, without goint through their site. They also have the interesting feature Rapid Transfer, which allows you to instantly deposit money to a bookmaker from your bank account.
There are very few downsides to Skrill. Some of the features are a little different from PayPal, but these are relatively easy to get your head around.
We have already mentioned some of the fees on Skrill, which can be marginally higher than PayPal in many areas. However, this is unlikely to have much of an impact on the average user and certainly won’t have an impact on the average gambler. It’s not going to take a large chunk of your money if you simply deposit into and withdraw out of gambling accounts. However, if you use a Skrill card at an ATM and if you use your credit card to fund your account, then you might be hit with some unexpected fees.
If you are able to limit the amount of times you deposit/withdraw with Skrill. Especially to and from your bank account or card. The fees between bookmaker and Skrill are not to intimidating.
It is difficult to pick fault with Skrill. The same would go for PayPal as well, after all, for a payment provider the only things you ask for are low fees, ease of use and high security, and both of these services excel in those areas. However, it’s the little things that sets these two apart, the little things that helps Skrill to stand head and shoulders above its long-time competitor.
In our opinion, from the perspective of a gambler looking for a web wallet with which to bankroll, Skrill is by far the best option. You can use it on more sites, you can contact customer service if need be and overall, it’s very easy to use. Skrill has come a long way over the last few years and whilst it may struggle to surpass PayPal’s reputation, if anyone can do it, they can.
