By Chris Emejuru

I applied for the much talked about TripleClicks ATM card, the Payoneer MasterCard over a month ago, on March 2. I finally received, activated and tested the card last week and I want to share the experience.

Affiliates become eligible for the card once they have at least $20 in their SFI account. When this happened for me, I got a message on the Alerts tab at the Affiliate Center telling me about applying for the card and I took it up. The application process involved going through a few screens, supplying my name and address and then photo ID details (name, number and validity period). Before doing the application I first checked the charges for the card: Card activation charge of $9.95 for people in the USA and $19.95 outside US, $3 for maintenance each month, $2 or $3 or $5 per loading transaction (the higher charge for faster loading days) and $1.99 per withdrawal outside US ($2.75 within US).

Approval was said to take a few business days, but—probably because my photo ID was the international passport—not long after on the same day, I got an email saying the application had been approved and the card had been “shipped” and should get to me between April 11 and 20. Just for making a successful application, I was awarded 500 VP. I also began to see a new Paid by Payoneer badge on my profile.

I used a Lagos post office box for delivery address. On April 1, I went to the post office for just in case the card arrived early. Nothing in the box. I went back on April 21, and there was the expected foreign envelope. I’d thought it would come from the US but no, the envelope had all the trademarks of the UK, complete with a return address in Hampshire, United Kingdom. And much to my surprise the local post office date-stamped it March 15, meaning it was already there lying idle somewhere for weeks when I first went on April 1.

Before receiving the card Payoneer had already sent two emails reminding me to activate the card or tell them if I’d not received it. So the next step now that I had the card was to visit their website, log into my account and do the needful. The Payoneer card itself looked somewhat different from the local Zenith Bank-issued MasterCard that I had. Compared to the Zenith MasterCard, the embossing of the card number, my name and the expiry date stood out more solidly on the Payoneer card, like gray metallic shapes, while on the local Zenith card the characters were little white depressions. On the Zenith card the shiny globe image was on the front above the MasterCard logo while on the Payoneer card it was on the back. Activating the card involved putting in the complete number at the website then choosing a 4-digit PIN. I was immediately told the activation was successful.

Next, I needed to test the card to make sure I could actually withdraw local (naira) currency with it. For this, I decided to visit an ATM of Zenith Bank. Because the card was dollar-denominated, I wondered if using it in the ATM would be any different from using Zenith’s naira-denominated MasterCard. It wasn’t. When I inserted the Payoneer MasterCard I was greeted by name just like with the Zenith card, and the two currency notes for the 2,000 that I typed in popped right out. Just like that. The only difference from using a local ATM card was I didn’t receive any SMS debit alert afterward. I would need to visit my account at the Payoneer website to see just how much dollars got removed for the 2,000 naira I just withdrew.

It turned out to be $13.16! The withdrawal was simply identified by the name and location of the local bank and ATM. Taking out $1.99 for the transaction charge, leaving $11.17, it meant the transaction was done with an exchange rate of about 179.051 naira to the dollar! This was nowhere near the official exchange rate for the naira of about 199, and definitely a far-cry from the more accessible open market rate of about 300 naira to the dollar. (Or were there some other charges I didn’t know about?) It will definitely pay me better to use the Payoneer account for standing order payment and other purchases in US dollars rather than withdrawing cash with the card locally. Unless of course I badly need the local currency to fulfill ECA orders or something.