Monzo.me alternatives for international payments?

So, TL;DR: I’d love to enable people to pay me by card, similarly to how Monzo.me works, but from (pretty much) any country. Does anyone have any suggestion?

For background: I have family on almost every continent of this world. We often order things online for one another.

When I need to pay people abroad I usually use transferwise, and it works a treat for almost all currencies and countries.

Sadly, the other way isn’t always so easy, and especially my family from Egypt often carries large amounts of cash with them when they come to visit us, as not even PayPal works well over there. I’d love to get rid of that.

Does someone know of a way that I as an individual can accept card payments internationally? Similarly to monzo.me, or Starling Settle Up, but much more flexible in terms of allowed countries? I’m quite happy to pay reasonable fees.

I even thought of signing up for stripe, but then I need to create a plausible looking website for a business first :smiley:

I suspect the money laundering risk is too high particularly when your talking about countries where its common to carry large amounts of cash.

Western Union?

If Transferwise and PayPal are not an option and as you said they carry cash then Western Union might be a good option to consider.

I know it’s not exactly monzo.me but once registered, just need to login and send money with saved card/bank details. Cash can be taken to the shops and can be transferred same day I think.

I find their website almost impossible to navigate though. I still haven’t figured out their fees or how it really works …

You can register for Stripe as a sole trader I think; I remember getting my account open before even I had any kind of web presence.

Besides that, what about crypto currencies?

I agree not the most user-friendly website but it’s an option and because it’s so widely available all over in the Middle East and Africa people know and trust this name and their local shops.

1 Like

I know I can. But I’m not even a sole trade, and don’t intend to be. It’s always going to be purely private. And their terms prohibit any private use, even if you are a sole trader (“You may not use Payment Services […] to conduct any personal or noncommercial transactions”)

I can’t take crypto currencies seriously, nor can my relatives, nor is going to be easy to buy these in some countries.

@SC95 Yes, you are right of course…