Daisy chain of funding to get Imperia Invest debit cards…

There are increasing numbers of people who are struggling to get funds to the Imperia Invest depot account in order to purchase a debit card package.

Imperia has de-activated funding through Liberty Reserve and Perfect Money and are only accepting Procurrex at the current time (that is when their site is up of course).

In essence members are being left to find ways to fund their Procurrex account in time to purchase before the end of April.

I’ve read several reports where the main exchangers SwapGold and Topex24 are struggling to provide an effective and efficient way to convert Liberty Reserve funds to Procurrex.

Looking at the SwapGold site I notice that they are encouraging purchase of Procurrex via Bank Wire so that is another avenue you might try if you can’t exchange your LR.

Another way I’ve seen reported is to exchange LR to either cgold or Global Digital Pay via WM Center. From there use SwapGold to change the cgold or GDP to Procurrex. Rather tortuous I know and you’ll need to allow for the additional fees but it does appear to be a workable option.

What about other people out there? Have you found a way to obtain Procurrex that is both economical and affordable. Let’s help each other make sure that anyone who wants to purchase an Imperia debit card has the best chance of doing so before the time limit runs out.

SwapGold provides a reliable and fast service…

Recently I had to carry out an ecurrency transaction between two payment processors. Never having done this before I was a little wary about the best way to do it. There are many horror stories where people have been duped of their money and I didn’t want to be another of those statistics.

Doing some research I came across SwapGold and decided to see if their service was as good as the reports I’d read. As you don’t need to sign up it makes it very quick and simple to carry out a transaction. You just need to specify the to and from payment processors and the amount to transfer (in USD or EUR).

Given that there are quite a number of payment processors in existence the site is set up to allow quick access to the most popular ones. If you find a payment processor that may be new or not already listed at SwapGold you can contact the site and they will provide details of how they could complete the transaction.

SwapGold are based in Singapore and the service is available 24 hours a day 365 days a year so if you encounter problems then you should be able to receive help quickly.

I did my transaction on a weekend and when I’d completed the details the response I received was that it would be completed within 3 hours. After the 3 hours had passed and the transfer hadn’t taken place I went back to the SwapGold site and noticed that the message had changed to say that it would be completed within 24 hours.

I’m not sure why there was a change, perhaps it was because I was doing this over weekend but you should just take note if you are doing an urgent transfer. I’m still happy with 24 hours though and in fact it was completed well within this time.

Overall my experience with SwapGold was very positive and I’m sure that it will be a service I use in the future.

Is it realistic to start Online Investing with just $5?

If you are just beginning in online investing should you take advantage of a programme that offers a very low $5 initial deposit. Just to be clear here I am focusing on online investing programmes that are based on a passive investment approach i.e. you make an investment on the basis of the programme paying a fixed or variable rate of interest per day or week.

With such a low entry point are the online investments being realistic about their offer? Well in one sense I think you can say they are. As many people distrust these forms of investment, companies need to come up with ways to allow people to try what is on offer at little risk. One way to do this is to set the entry point low and assuming things perform as planned the investor would be persuaded and therefore happy to invest more. So as a marketing ploy this approach could be considered acceptable.

For the more cynical observer there could be a view that the programme is going out to attract as much cash as possible before heading off into the sunset. Personally I find this rather short sighted, of course some programmes do fail but as long as a potential investor does their homework it should be possible to root out the bad apples fairly easily before parting with funds.

More importantly perhaps is the practicality for beginners to realistically fund a programme with say a $5 investment. Unfortunately you can’t just walk into the nearest branch, put your $5 on the counter and walk out with a receipt. In practice there are a number of hurdles to jump before your investment can start earning.

Let’s take a closer look at just what sort of fees you could encounter. I can’t be precise here but the figures I’m presenting are typical and should be considered when investing in any online programme. I’ll use US$ for comparison purposes (I’m making the assumption that bank wires aren’t an option as they generally require quite a high level of investment to be used).

In most cases your funds would need to leave your account and go to an e-currency exchanger. There is generally a minimum fee attached to any transaction which is normally in the region of $25. If you are converting funds from another currency you will also be penalised on the exchange rate (this can be fairly significant).

As the funds go from the e-currency account to the payment processor there may also be a charge from the payment processor for receipt of the funds. You wouldn’t normally be charged any fee for making the investment to the online programme itself.

In summary you are therefore looking at a minimum of $25 and perhaps a maximum of $30 to $40 to get your investment started. Clearly for a $5 investment this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So, as a beginner how much should you consider as a starting amount to invest? In reality I believe you have to consider $100 as an absolute minimum (excluding the charges discussed) and how long it would take to not only recoup your seed money but the associated charges as well.

The $5 option is more suitable for those who already have payment processor accounts and receive interest from their existing investments.

Hey buddy could you spare a dime…or a euro…or a yen…

Recently I had cause to curse the workings of the great financial giants that astride the currency markets. Now I’m not suggesting that I fell foul of currency crooks for millions but in it’s own way I was frustrated by the money system.

I wanted to make an investment in a particular programme that traded in Euro’s. As my home currency is the British Pound it seemed fairly straightforward. All I had to do was send my GBP to a payment processor, use their services to convert to Euro and make the investment. Unfortunately things didn’t work out quite like that.

There was no problem sending the funds from my own account to the payment processor. Next was the conversion to Euro’s. Cringing at the less than favourable exchange rate I was presented with I nevertheless pressed the submit button and hey presto my original GBP miraculously turned into Euro’s.

Then I made the payment to the online programme. All sounds pretty simple really and there is where things went wrong. When I logged in to the online investment plan I realised that the amount of Euro’s I was expecting wasn’t in the account.

As I’d done a similar transaction in the previous week I wasn’t expecting any problems so this was something of a shock. I submitted a support ticket to the online investment group and asked why the funds I had invested weren’t as I’d expected. I was anticipating a reply to say that a mistake had been made and that my full amount would be credited.

What I got was a reply to say that they had invested the sum they had received from the payment processor. Yet I knew that the sum I’d converted was higher than I was seeing on the screen. Doing a little more research I discovered that the online investment programmes’ account with the payment processor was designated in US$.

So, I’d converted GBP to Euro’s in the belief that when I paid the investment account it would transfer the whole amount of Euro’s. That’s where my assumption went awry. What happened in practice was that when my account had been converted into Euro’s the processor then converted the Euro’s to US$ so that they could be applied to the investment company account. These US$ then had to be re-converted to Euro’s to be placed with the investment programme. The result of all this was a cost I wasn’t expecting!

Moral of the story is to check just what machinations your funds have to go through to get from your account to its final destination.