So as many of you know by now Dwolla and TradeHill are neck and neck with each other due to claims of missing fund. So they first just stopped deposits from Dwolla and said they would notify customer before stopping Dwolla transfers sadly they didn't then that made me a little mad cause I had just sold off some coins and was going to send them to Dwolla but could not due to them silently stopping. Then they started saying to use Paxum and at first I was like of I'll switch to Paxum can't be too bad. Boy the further I dug in and looking over all the fees and info about the site it hit me "MAN WAS I WRONG!" Mainly cause .50 on Dwolla and little headache to setup VS 6.00 on Paxum and a world of headaches and hoops to jump through just to get setup.
So I made a little workup for all to see.
Fees For personal – PAXUM
Hassel to setup ACCOUNT: Painfully annoying
Card Fees:
Current Account Monthly Maintenance FREE
Prepaid MasterCard® Maintenance Fee $44.95/Annual
Prepaid MasterCard card issue FREE
Card Activation FREE
Domestic ATM Withdrawal (USA) $2.00
Domestic POS Transaction (USA) $1.00
International ATM Withdrawal $2.00
International POS Transaction $1.00
Paxum Prepaid Credit Card Limit $2500/day
Declined Transaction $0.50
Pin Code Change $1.00
ATM Balance Inquiry $0.50
Replacement Card $44.95
Funds Transfer To Prepaid Card $0.25
Fund transfers:
Funds Transfer between users $0.25
Loading Funds By Wire $50.00
Check, Money Order $5.00
Funds Withdrawal From Account by Wire $50.00
Funds Withdrawal From Account by Check $5.00
Funds Withdrawal To External Credit Card 1% W/(minimum $6.00 Fee)
Funds Withdrawal From Account By ACH $5.00
Loading Funds By ACH $5.00
ACH Returned Transaction $10.00
ACH Bank Account Verification $1.00
Dwolla Fees
Hassel to setup ACCOUNT: Minor to none
Last Updated: Jun 26, 2011 03:04PM CDT
Bank Account Verification: 2 Micro deposits between .01 and .20 to your account
Cost to send money: $0.00
Cost to receive money: $0.25
Cost for auto withdrawal: $0.00
Cost for manual withdrawal: $0.00
Cost to open account: $0.00
Cost to add bank account to account: $0.00
Cost to request funds with invoice: $0.00
Bank Account Verification: 2 Micro deposits between .01 and .20 to your account
Debit Card for instant access to funds: FREE
Transfer funds to bank account: FREE
Transfer fees:
from PayPal balance or bank account. FREE
from a debit or credit card or PayPal Credit: 2.9% + $0.30 USD (the sender decides who pays this fee).
Purchase fees:
To purchase goods: Free
To Get Paid for goods: 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 USD†
PayPal debit card: Free
PayPal Debit per transaction fee: Free
MONEYBOOKERS.COM
Domestic USA:
Deposit from bank to account: FREE
Deposit funds from MAZOOMA: FREE
Deposit from account to BANK: $1.80
Bank Account Verification: Confirming Style used
Sending money from account: 1% (up to USD 0.50 USD)
Receive money: FREE
From the Look of the FEES the flat FEES Paxum uses can be a little high especially when most average Bitcoin users are doing under 100$ transactions. I cash out every week and I crunch out almost 12 Bitcoins a week on a good week that is maybe $150 at current market trend for value.
From Dwolla to my bank in about its $0.50 in fees So $149.50 is the account.
On moneybooker it be $1.80 in fees So $148.20 is in the account.
Using PAXUM it be $6.00 dollars in fees so $144.00 is in the account.
Now on my amounts can be a little high for the average mining as I am mining with 2 quad GPU systems and doing little to no trading. no my roommate who is an average user none enthusiast he sells about 4.5 Coins a week so on current market sale of 13.00 he would make 58.5 in sales.
From Dwolla to my bank in about its $0.50 in fees So $58.00 is the account.
On moneybooker it be $1.80 in fees So $56.70 is in the account.
Using PAXUM it be $6.00 dollars in fees so $52.50 is in the account.
As you can see Paxum fees are a lot more of a loss to smaller transactions in my case it's not so bad in. But his and the average users it is a little more felt due to their smaller transaction size. I can also see the uncertainty of the Dwolla thing has taken a little security out of the Bitcoin market and caused it to drop a dollar in less than a day.
To Paxum:
Charging me a dollar to confirm my account and trying to push your Prepaid card by making it a dollar to deposit to it but charging $44.95 annually then A another dollar AT POS so if I buy a soda for 1.50 its really 2.50 as a business you need to learn where you need to absorb some fees if you want to stay around in this world. I understand you want to make money that is the goal of a business, but you can’t push all the fees to the consumer end it chases people off and bring in a lot of resistance. PayPal is a huge company and charges less within reason than Paxum I'm sure there is processing fees along with the PayPal card that is in my wallet now, but they absorb that it's called a cost of doing business.
General Thoughts:
For now most of my trading will be done on MT.Gox until TradeHill (which I had learned to love) starts using a cheaper service than Paxum there charges are just to high for the size of transactions coming in and out for the average user.