The multifaceted uses of Skrill in day-to-day life

Amy Fenton
Authored by Amy Fenton
Posted: Wednesday, May 22, 2024 - 09:04

E-wallets have advanced dramatically over the last five years. It feels like we’ve gone from using our physical cards in supermarkets to using our phones for everything. However, for those of you who are more resistant to the idea of having your entire life go through your mobile phone, you might be less of a believer when it comes to the benefits of using e-wallets like Skrill for your day-to-day business. Today, we will cover a few reasons people use Skrill and what’s driving their preference.

Online gaming

You can use Skrill on hundreds of different gaming websites, which also extends to online gambling. E-wallets have quickly become the prominent route people use to deposit their funds to iGaming platforms, whether placing a sports bet, playing a casino game or buying in-game tokens for a range of free-to-play games.

Of all the casinos that allow to deposit with Skrill, they have one thing in common: they champion the use of e-wallets. There’s a reason there has been a considerable shift from traditional payment systems like Visa and Mastercard to depositing via electronic wallets.

Using an e-wallet payment system like Skrill for casino gaming means adding another layer of security to your gaming. Instead of having a credit card number, CVV and expiry date all held on a casino platform server, there’s only your Skrill or Neteller ID. If you use Apple Pay or PayPal, it’s all linked to your email address. Ultimately, it means that if somebody illicitly gets their hands on the information, there’s nothing that they can do with it – from a financial perspective, anyway.

Skrill has many services and departments, including those where you can report fraudulent and suspect transactions. Because it’s such a big name in the finance world, it can quickly flag transactions, spot fraud and use the latest anti-money laundering prevention tools to keep your money safe.

Using your e-wallet abroad

Some of us are old enough to remember when going on holiday meant you had to ring the bank, tell them where you were going, and pay extortionate transaction fees if you wanted to use your card abroad. Although banks have since turned a corner with this approach, and a number of them now levy relatively small fees if you use your card abroad, e-wallets have definitely got one over on them in this department.

Apple Pay is currently rolling out its service globally, already operating in 34 countries. This means that if you’re on holiday or travelling, you won’t have to worry about being stung with exorbitant fees or charges via your bank. Skrill has gone one better, and you can use its service in over 40 countries.

While Skrill might be the e-wallet of choice over Apple Pay, something tells us that the executives at Apple won’t be having too many sleepless nights even after its recent market dip. Some economists and traders have even advised people to buy the dip; such is their trust in the stock – which you shouldn’t do unless you understand the many risks involved in trading.

Amazon, eBay and other prominent retailers

Although we often associate the fintech goliath PayPal with eBay, you can use a whole host of other e-wallets, too. Skrill is one of the most popular e-wallets on eBay and Amazon. Once you have linked your Amazon or eBay account with your e-wallet, you can use it for your transactions with a few swipes of your phone, biometric ID, or a PIN and 2FA system you’ve set up.

Amazon might not be as dominant online as it was in the early 2010s. However, it still handles millions of transactions globally daily, and it’s estimated that up to 40% of all transactions online are on Amazon. Crucially, the company has made a noticeable effort to cater to e-wallet payment systems over the last few years.

So, although you can use Skrill on over 50 million websites, Amazon and eBay are great examples of leading names in e-commerce that have shifted toward creating a platform that caters to Skrill users. All of the top supermarkets, sports retailers and travel companies are just some of the industries that have adapted to the changing e-wallet landscape.

Although PayPal has maintained an enormous presence in financial technology, we have seen a flood of people swarm toward e-wallet technology since the beginning of this decade. Skrill has been able to hoover up some of the newer entrants into the market, with Gen Z, in particular, opting for Skrill as their e-wallet of choice.

Like the internet and other innovative payment systems such as cryptocurrency, it took a good few years for those in the industry to wax lyrical about them before they truly emerged as a globally disruptive innovation.

It definitely helps that Apple and Google are now putting their huge commercial presence behind them and investing billions into research and development of e-wallets to make them even more streamlined and convenient for our daily use. This means that smaller companies such as Skrill, which are nonetheless just as viable, can benefit from the collective research and investment that’s continuing to grow in this exciting new area of finance.