A lot of my friends are doing rakets here and there to augment almost barely-scraping-by salaries by consulting for clients abroad. Receiving payments has been one heck of a problem with the lack of a reliable payment service.

Western Union has always been the most reliable but it has proven to be a burden for the ones sending due to the high cost. The next best reliable service as many have attested to is Xoom. Almost the same scheme as Western Union (with added services like home delivery and direct-to-bank deposit) but with cheaper sending costs.

Me and my friends have never encountered any problem with Xoom but recent developments has forced them to take out that merchant payment button service. Meaning the process of having payment sent has become more cumbersome than just a few clicks, replaced by a messy and confusing process that clients loath going through.

There’s PayPal but as for my experience, using PayPal is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in a six-shooter. You can get away with flawless transactions but you’re always threading that thin line of having their system flag your account for “suspicious activity” and they’ll give you a lot of pain to get your money back . I still haven’t forgotten them for robbing me of my honestly-earned Php 5000 in mixed deductions and fees all because their security and flagging system was too “strict” (flawed in my opinion).

Is there any other way to get money?