Douglas K.

I found this service via web search. I took the risk and bought their smallest message package for $15. I happened to use my corporate PayPal account because the personal one didn't have any funds - I even sent a message to the person who was supposed to be my personal assistant regarding this and he said no problem. I waited for them to confirm my purchase and update my account. 4 days after the purchase, i got a message from the personal assistant that they could not verify my purchase. I waited 3 days then replied to him asking why they were still holding on to my money if they couldn't verify the purchase. No reply for a week now and no money

In Forex trade, the rule of thumb is 'you don't trade money you can't afford to lose' which means taking a loan is not really encouraged. But forexwithfriends.net has loans that can change that approach. The good thing about these loans is that you don't need collateral to get one and if you fail to repay there are no negative repercussions - you just won't be able to borrow more money from the website.
Another great feature is the loan top up option. If you have repaid over 50% of what you had borrowed, you can get fresh loan which allows you to keep growing your trading capital by 25% every month.
A major disadvantage of borrowing from this website is that you cannot get more than $250. You also need to have your own money to deposit with a Forex broker first before you can get loans from the website.

Touted as the PayPal of Africa, one would expect a lot from PesaPal but when you try integrating it with your website, you realize that apart from the name, this site has nothing else to make it the PayPal of Africa. (its good when paying for utility bills but not for merchant services)

The main problems are:

Integration: - Very difficult to integrate with your website if you are not a technical guy. Also the plugins available for popular CMS like wordpress do not function and even the people who developed them initially have abandoned them. The only simpler alternative is to use their Simple Selling option which means your customers will have to leave your website and go to pesapal to purchase - and they will not be redirected to your website after making the payment.

You cannot do refunds: With other payment gateways, you have full control of your money so you can refund any client who is not satisfied with your service/product. With Pesapal, there is no option for this.

Concealing information: When you signup for a merchant account, there is no indication that you have to provide documents like (memorandum of association, certificate of incorporation, passport photos of directors, voided check in the name of the business etc) to use the service. But once you receive payments from clients and try to withdraw the money, you get an email requesting all these documents. If you are not willing to provide the documents, they will not process the withdrawal request and will not refund the money back to the clients who made payments. Worst of all, they will not respond to your emails.