Revolution Money Exchange–A Free PayPal Alternative

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I love the convenience of PayPal, but I hate the fees. I’ve been known to request a paper check sent via snail mail rather than pay the fees levied by PayPal. Patrick over at Cash Money Life sent me an email the other day about a great alternative to PayPal called Revolution Money Exchange. What’s so great about Revolution Money Exchanage, you ask. It’s free and easy to sign up for an account. On top of that, if you sign up through the banner links here before May 15, 2008, they’ll deposit $25 into your account. Here is the link to sign up for an account, followed by some further details:

Revolution Money Exchange is Free and gives new accounts $25, so what’s the catch?

While I love free stuff, I’m naturally suspicious whenever somebody offers me something for free. So I spent some time on the Revolution Money Exchange site trying to figure out just how they offer their service for free. My best answer, is that unlike PayPal, all accounts are funded through your checking or savings account. PayPal permits users to make payments with credit cards, Revolution Money Exchange does not. Most wire transfers from bank accounts don’t result in fees like credit card transactions do, which I think explains how Revolution Money Exchange can offer its service for free.

What personal information does Revolution Money Exchange require?

Signing up for Revolution Money Exchange does require you to disclose some confidential information, such as your address, telephone number, and social security number. According to the site, they will never use your SSN to access your credit history. Here’s their explanation as to why they need this information:

You might wonder why we ask for certain pieces of information that you may be nervous to share, such as your Social Security Number. We would not ask for any information that was not necessary to enable the security we promise to you. Also, to help the government fight the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities, Federal law requires all financial institutions to obtain, verify and record information that identifies each person who opens an account.

With identity theft on the rise, we use your Social Security Number to confirm your identity by cross referencing it against other personal data you provide. This way, if someone were to get a hold of your Social Security Number, a MoneyExchange account could not be set up in your name without knowing your other personal information. So, sometimes it may seem as if you have to share more information about yourself, but in the end it actually protects your financial information to an even greater degree.

To protect confidential information, Revolution Money Exchange states that all “transaction information is transmitted with a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection via the Internet. SSL is a protocol for transmitting sensitive information over the Internet using an asymmetric cryptographic system that uses two keys – a public key that is used to encrypt the data and a private key known only to the recipient to read the encrypted message. SSL encrypts your personal information before it leaves your computer, ensuring no one else can read it.”

Remember the May 15, 2008 Deadline

Remember, if you want to sign up for Revolution Money Exchange and get the $25 bonus, you must do so before the May 15, 2008 deadline. Clicking on the banner below will take you to the sign-up page. The sign-up process took me about 2 minutes.

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