MoneyBookers (MB for Short): Registration, Transfers, Activation, and Withdrawals
This is a highly competitive online electronic bank, currently used by many online earning companies as a primary payment method. Compared with other online banks, after you earn money online, you can keep it in your own MoneyBookers account, known as MB for short. Later, when you need it, you can apply directly from your account to have the dollars you earned mailed to you by check, or you can use the dollars in MB for online shopping. It also avoids the trouble PayPal had of requiring an international credit card for activation. If you open a China Merchants Bank All-in-One Card, which supports both domestic and foreign currency deposits and withdrawals, or a Bank of China passbook for both RMB and foreign currencies, you can transfer the dollars in MB into a domestic bank without ID verification. Of course, you can also activate it with your ID card, but only if the address on your ID card matches your current address. So when registering for MB, be sure to use real information that matches your ID card so it can be used later to activate MB. In addition, no receiving fee and low sending fees are another major advantage.
If you are a beginner, you do not need to activate your own MB, nor do you need to use wire transfers. You can go to online earning forums and exchange with other people. Many online earning forums currently provide electronic currency trading sections. Here are a few popular forums where many people buy MB:
The electronic currency trading section of Online Earning Home:
http://www.u8881.com/discuz/forumdisplay.php?fid=5&page=1
The online currency trading section of China Earnfriend:
http://www.earnfriend.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=19
The troublesome part is not exchanging MB; the troublesome part is having no MB at all. Once your online earning grows and you earn more MB, you should activate your own MB and receive US dollars directly by check.
Friendly reminders:
- When you join a company and choose MoneyBookers as the payment method, the account you enter should be the email address you used when registering MoneyBookers, not the User ID, which is a set of numbers. Remember this.
- MB strictly forbids registering two accounts. Pay close attention to this. If you have already applied for two accounts, write to MB immediately and ask the company to delete the extra account, so you can keep your account safe.
- All information you register must be completely true and must match the information on your ID card. If your ID card information is outdated, you should fill in your current real information, and before you want to activate MB with your ID card, be sure to apply for a new ID card using your current real information.
Friends whose English is not good can use software or online translation: click here for online translation, selecting English to Chinese-simp and then clicking Translate, or use English online translation, multilingual online translation, Google Toolbar, where the English version seems to work a bit better, click here to install the English version, and choose Chinese from the language selector in the upper right, etc.
1. How to Register
OK, let us now begin applying for an MB account:
- First prepare an email address. Yahoo Mail is recommended.
- Then click here, next click Sign up now or Register in the upper left of the new page, and then you can fill in your personal information. Applying for an MB account is completely free and does not require a credit guarantee. Fill it in according to the actual page.
The password must be at least 6 characters and consist of letters and numbers, with at least one number. For language, usually choose English. Registration through the Chinese interface sometimes has problems, perhaps because the site’s Chinese interface is not yet very mature.
After filling it out, press Next. At this point you need to check your email for a message from MoneyBookers.com and click the link in the message to confirm your email address.
Now you have reached the key step in registering MB. Please read the supplementary registration notes below:
- Fields marked with a red
*are required; - Title: choose your title: Mr. for men; Mrs. for married women; Ms. for women;
- Did you move in last two years? Answer truthfully by selecting Yes or No;
- Date of Birth: birthday, entered as day/month/year. This information must be recorded carefully: when withdrawing money from MB, you will be asked to enter your date of birth. Also, the day/month/year format should follow international convention, for example: 03 06 1981 means you were born on June 3, 1981.
After checking that all information is correct, click Next. The next page asks you to check the information again, and to tick both sentences at the bottom of the page:
- Please keep me informed of future offers and promotions from moneybookers.com.
- I signify my full acceptance of Monerbookers General Terms & Conditions of Membership and Privacy policy.
In the Turing number box, enter the verification code displayed on the left.
Finally, click Confirm registration in the lower right to submit the form. The new page will show that your MB registration login was successful.
At this point you can click OK to browse your account, or click Logout in the upper left to exit the account. In the future, log out every time after logging in to keep your account secure.
- How to log in to your MB account:
First click here to open the MB company homepage, click Login in the upper left, and enter the login page. It is recommended to bookmark this page:
- Email: registered email address
- Password: login password
- Turing number: image verification code
After filling it in, click Login.
This shows the details of your last login. For security, you must carefully check the login IP and time shown above. If you discover anything inconsistent with your own account login activity, it means someone else has logged into your account. Your dollars may be at risk of theft. You should take this seriously and act quickly, for example by changing your password immediately, installing genuine antivirus software and a firewall, and so on.
Click OK to enter the account. If your account balance is zero, a payment method selection will appear, asking whether you want to use a bank account or a credit card. You can choose either one; it will not affect operations inside the account.
If your account has a balance, the account’s transaction history for the past week will appear. You can also choose specific Start date and End date values and click GO to view receipts and other transactions within a particular time period.
Friendly reminder: before receiving money with MB each time, log in to your MB account once to ensure your money can safely arrive in your account.
2. How to Transfer Money
This means transferring money in MoneyBookers to another person’s MB account, for exchange or shopping:
- After logging in, click Send Money. The system will automatically display the maximum amount you can transfer this time, for example: Max. 61.62 USD.
- Enter the amount you want to transfer in the box under Amount. Be careful not to exceed the amount shown after Max. The currency under Currency must be selected correctly.
The two options below are:
- Schedule payments / standing order (monthly rent, membership fee…) [?]
- Escrow (receive the good you purchase before payment is released) [?]
One is the option for immediate and scheduled payments, and the other is the option to pay only after receiving a payment request, similar to collection and acceptance in China. You can leave both unselected.
- Click Next;
- In Recipient’s email address, fill in the recipient’s MB email address;
- In Email subject, write a subject, anything is fine, and you can also leave it blank;
- In An explanation note, write the content, meaning anything you need to explain, and you can also leave it blank;
- After clicking Next again, a summary of this payment will appear. You should check it carefully so you do not send money to the wrong place;
- Finally, click Send to enter the verification page. Here you are required to fill in your own birth day, month, and year, because this information cannot be checked inside your MB account. Therefore, when registering, you must fill in true information and keep a record of it.
Friendly reminders:
- About password protection: MoneyBookers will remind you that they will not ask for your password by email or phone. If you receive such an email or phone call, or if you find that any site is trying to impersonate MoneyBookers, do not be fooled, and report it to MB as soon as possible. Also, do not enter MoneyBookers through links in unknown emails, because just like E-Gold scammers, some people try to steal MoneyBookers passwords. To learn more about online bank password protection, please click here.
- About receiving and sending fees: the company charges the sender a fee. Each fee is 1%, with a maximum of 0.5 euros. There is no fee for the receiver.
Why hesitate? Click here and join MoneyBookers right away.
3. How to Activate and Withdraw
Some people ask: why activate it? My MB is not activated, but I can still receive payments, send payments, and exchange RMB.
That is indeed true. For ordinary online earners, not activating MB does not affect use of your MB at all. However, an unactivated MB has two inconveniences:
A. Transaction amount limits: an unactivated MB can only transact up to 1,500 euros within every 90 days; for an activated MB, this limit increases to 16,000 euros. Of course, this limit has little impact on ordinary online earners: before your online earning has grown large, your dollar transaction volume over three months will not exceed 1,500 euros. To check this limit, click [view limit] in the account history.
B. The inconvenience of withdrawing money back to China: with an unactivated MB, withdrawing US dollars to a domestic bank can only be done once, and that one time also has a 15-euro amount limit and at least a 1.8-euro fee. So you can only exchange RMB with other people. If you always ask others to exchange MB with you, then others are always taking a little from the MB dollars you worked so hard to earn. Will you feel at ease with that?
All right, below let us activate MB and withdraw funds back to China at the same time:
Step 1: Open a Domestic Bank Card or Passbook
Because some China Merchants Bank branches in domestic cities cannot receive MB wire transfers, and because the fees are too high, it is not recommended to open a CMB All-in-One Card.
At present, opening a Bank of China passbook for both RMB and foreign currencies may be the most convenient option. Bank of China is strongly recommended.
Of course, if you have an international credit card (Visa), then you can activate MB the same way you activate PayPal. That issue is outside the scope of this page.
Step 2: Activate Your MB Account
There are two activation methods:
First method: activate by emailing relevant identity proof and address information.
- Scan your ID card, then use image-editing software to add translated labels, for example:
Name: Full name (Hanyu Pinyin)
Sex: Gender Male / Female
Nationality: Ethnicity (Han ethnicity: The Han Nationality)
Birthday: Date of birth Example: 12 Mar, 1981
Address: Address (English)
Issued on Feb 1st 2002 Validity:20 years Validity period: 20 years
NO. + ID card number
The People’s Republic of China
Resident ID card- Scan proof of your current residential address. English-language proof is best, such as international mail, foreign checks, express delivery documents, etc. If it is not in English, it needs to be translated.
- Write an activation email:
The subject can be: Verify my account please
In the body, it is enough to include your account information, My account is @.com; you can write other polite wording yourself.
Attach the identity proof and address information with English annotations that you made above, or insert them into the email body.
Send it to: service@moneybookers.com.
If MB agrees to activate your account, they will notify you by email. Then you can refer to the relevant steps below to withdraw the dollars in your MB account directly to your own domestic bank card or passbook.
Friendly reminder: the prerequisite for using this method to activate your MB is that your MB account information, your ID card information, and your current home address information must all match completely.
Your ID card can be renewed according to your current real information. If your MB account information does not match your current real information, you can modify it as follows:
Log in to your MB account, click profile, then click Edit under Contact details, and then begin editing.
Note: you can modify the profile information in your MB account only once within 3 months. So be especially careful when you do it.
Second method: activate through a bank-received activation code, which requires at least 35 US dollars in your MB account. This is covered in Steps 3 to 5 below.
Comparison of the two activation methods:
Activating with identity proof and address information is slightly more troublesome, but it can save at least 1.80 euros in fees. The bank activation-code method is easier, and it combines activation with the procedure for withdrawing dollars from MB, but it requires a fee of at least 1.80 euros.
Using identity proof and address information to activate is recommended.
Step 3: Link Your Bank Account
- First go to the bank where you opened your bank card or passbook, preferably a branch, and ask for that bank’s SWIFT CODE, such as BKCHCNBJ810. This code is equivalent to the identity number of each bank, and it must be used when transferring foreign exchange from abroad into China.
If you cannot find the SWIFT code at the bank, you can check here:
http://www.swift.com/biconline/index.cfm
Note: if the bank where you opened your account does not have a SWIFT code, you can look up the SWIFT code of the provincial-level or prefecture-level branch, for a total of 11 characters.
The first 8 characters of several major banks that I know are as follows, with the remaining three characters *** representing the specific branch:
- ICBC: ICBKCNBJ***
- Agricultural Bank of China: ABOCCNBJ***
- Bank of China: BKCHCNBJ***
- China Construction Bank: PCBCCNBJ***
Specific lookup method:
Enter the first 8 characters above, according to your account-opening bank, into the BIC code field, and you can find all SWIFT codes for that bank. With the range narrowed, it is easier to search; just pay attention to the bank’s location.
For other banks, if my inference is correct, you can find the four-letter English code of the bank you are searching for and then add CNBJ.
- Link and add the bank account for receiving funds in your MB account: click profile, find the List of bank accounts section, click Add, and fill in the SWIFT of the bank where you opened the account.
Do not change China (Pr). Copy and paste the SWIFT of the bank where you opened your account, then click Next to continue. The system will automatically identify the SWIFT information you entered and prompt you to enter your bank account number. Enter the corresponding account number, without hyphens, and be very careful not to enter it incorrectly. It is recommended that you first type your bank account number into your own Word document and check it repeatedly to ensure there are no errors. When filling in the actual form, use copy and paste.
After the system indicates success, click OK to confirm.
Return to the List of bank accounts section in profile, and you will find that your bank account has been added there. If there is an error, you can delete that account with the nearby button and add it again.
Step 4: Withdraw to Your Domestic Bank Account for the First Time
When you need to withdraw funds, meaning when you want to transfer them into your own domestic bank account or credit card, click withdraw: select the receiving account, and the system will calculate the fee, the maximum amount that can be transferred, and so on.
Special note: withdrawals incur a fee equivalent to 1.8 euros. The withdrawal amount must not be lower than the equivalent of 10 euros, and for an unactivated MB, it also cannot exceed 15 euros.
Enter the amount you want to withdraw after Amount to be withdrawn. After clicking Next, the relevant information for this withdrawal will appear. Please check it carefully and make sure it is correct, then click Withdraw to continue with security verification: enter your date of birth. When a summary of this withdrawal appears, click OK to complete the withdrawal process. Next, what you need to do is go to the bank to check about 4 to 5 days later.
Step 5: Withdraw a Second Time and Enter the Activation Code
- After completing the first wire-transfer withdrawal according to Step 4 above, when you go to the bank to ask whether the money has arrived, ask the bank for the wire transfer document. There will be an activation code, the VERIFY CODE, on it, which you must remember.
Usually this activation code appears on the bank’s payment receipt A4 form, on the fourth line from the bottom. It will clearly say something like VRF CODE 28NSJ1 MONEYBOOKERS, a six-character code made up of letters and numbers.
- For the second withdrawal, MB requires you to enter the activation code. After you correctly fill in the activation code you received, withdraw another $20 to your bank account and that is enough.
After the second withdrawal succeeds, your MB account will be automatically activated, and MB will send an email notifying you that the account has been activated.
Also remember: the second withdrawal must be completed within one month, because the activation code is valid for one month. So if you plan to activate MB, you should have at least $35 in your account: $30 for two withdrawals, plus a little fee, probably $3 to $4.
Some people, after practical experience, believe that as long as the activation code is entered successfully, MB can be activated, and it is not necessarily required to actually withdraw funds. If you wait a bit for MB to notify you that your account has been activated and then withdraw, you can save one fee.
A common rule for online bank withdrawals: the larger a single withdrawal amount is, the more worthwhile it is.
Why hesitate? Click here and join MoneyBookers right away.