Revolution Money Exchange – PayPal’s new competitor

I despise PayPal because monopolies are bad for the consumer. PayPal has become the defacto method of sending money across the Internet and paying for eBay auctions. I just sold an extra CPU on eBay for $60 and PayPal took their $2 cut (don’t get me started on the $5.41 eBay got). Google Checkout was suppose to be a big PayPal competitor for retail sales, but peer to peer transactions are stuck using PayPal. There might be a viable contender in town now.

Revolution Money Exchange is part of Revolution, LLC, founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case. The board of directors is filled with former CEOs: David Pottruck from Charles Schwab; David Golden from JP Morgan; Franklin Raines from Fannie Mae; and Russell Hogg from MasterCard International. This definetely isn’t some homegrown Web 2.0 project coming out of some guy’s garage.

Here are some of the differences between Revolution Money Exchange and Paypal:

  • No fees for receiving and sending funds
  • Only checking accounts are used, cutting credit cards out of the picture is what reduces the costs so drastically
  • No business services or eBay integration
  • Simple interface, PayPal has become a nightmare to use

Sending money person to person is Money Exchange’s focus and it shows in the account creation process which is very straightforward. They’ve got a $25 sign up bonus going on until May 15th so I thought I would try it out. If I don’t end up using it then I got some free money. If you sign up for the $25 bonus through the link below I’ll get a $10 and then you can refer people.

Give it a try; it would make transactions like going in on a gift together or selling things on Craigslist a lot easier. There is some real potential here and I hope it starts growing in popularity.

Refer A Friend using Revolution Money Exchange

7 Replies to “Revolution Money Exchange – PayPal’s new competitor”

  1. Looks promising, lets hope it takes off!

    Paypal does suck and so does ebay but many know who they are and use them!

    I’ve found with *alternative* services you limit your buyers because people like to buy with convenience and receive their merch ASAP. Unfortunately, a large number of ebay users also have paypal accounts, so you end up paying them their % on both sides to provide an easy buying experience. Convenience costs money!

    I have tried using one of the alternatives years ago and it turned out to be a pain and I lost a buyer due to the extra complications when it came to pay time. Some people just like to use their Credit Cards to pay for purchases… probably the illusion of *extra* security.

    On the flip side (as a buyer) there have been some things I wouldn’t have been able to purchase unless I had a paypal account.

    However, their rates (or lack there of) are attractive and they have a pretty high transaction limit. Both of these make for a no brainer to offer as an option for payment and possibly pair it with some kind of *deal* or incentive to the buyer who *dares* to use it.

    Though with all things free, I wonder how long they will be able to keep it so. The idea of some bank-like company offering a free or no fee, money send / receive service just doesn’t compute. When money is involved every business wants their cut!

    Good find, I like the name and I’ll keep my eye on it.

  2. Hi, I need to get in touch with you regarding your link order plugin for WordPress. Tried to leave a comment on the plugin page but that seems not to work.
    Same problem with the plugin itself. I did everything stated in the readme file but it just does nothing. I’m NOT using widgets. WP 2.5.1. What could possibly be wrong? I would really need this to work, else i have to order the links manually.
    Again, sorry for approaching you this way, i just couldn’t think of an other way.

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