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Today I am interviewing Timothy Thomas from FriendlyPay and his associate James Holland.

(Q) When was FriendlyPay established, and what were the aims of the company at that time?

It was established in 2003 by Timothy Thomas of Canada. In the web marketing arena there were 3 dominant players; Paypal, Stormpay and Intgold. Paypal had been around long before this. The biggest complaint at the time was the practice of e-currency companies to suddenly and without warning lock their member’s accounts and freeze that member’s funds. Many times the member never got back their money and it was confiscated, with no legal means of pursuing the e-currency provider to get it back. Members simply lost their money.

We recognized this unscrupulous behavior and how they were allowed by governments to get away with it. We set out to never have this occur and treat our members with respect and honest treatment. In short we sought to provide fair and honest service to web marketers, and never treat them in such a way.

(Q) A lot of readers may see your company and want to know, do you allow HYIPs or autosurf programs? If so, what restrictions may apply?

We do allow them. While we try to protect the FriendlyPay member, they (the member) needs to realize that HYIPs are for the most part scams. We do review them and if we cannot gather the proper due diligence we will not allow them. In my opinion stay away from HYIP programs.

(Q) If I open a personal account for sending money to friends… and my friends are all over the globe, how much will I be paying in transfer fees to send others personal money?

As a free member, sending to other FP members is free to the sender, the receiver is charged a 1% fee. As a paid member, “Low Fee” account member, it is free to send or receive. However, we make it possible for a member to send money in many formats. As a member you would be able to convert your dollars to 8 other forms of currency, including E-Gold, and transact funds to international associates this way. We accept members from all over. If there are any countries we do not allow they will be listed in the terms and conditions.

(Q) Is that fee cheaper then most of your competition?

Yes. Most are around 2.9%.

(Q) Who would you consider to be your main competition and why?

When it comes to payment processing, PayPal. Since they have been around a few more years and have secured this arena, it does make it tough to get in there, but we are. What we have that PayPal does not is the E-currency exchange. We allow members to deposit and withdraw by way of many other E-currencies such as E-gold, E-bullion, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve, 1MDC.

(Q) I see that Friendlypay offers its users a very nice escrow payment option. This type of protection should be popular with sellers. Can you tell me more about this feature?

Escrow is a standard escrow service. If you are the one to send the money then only you can approve it be completed to the receiver. However only the receiver can cancel it. If need be FriendlyPay can step in as a 3rd party to help settle any dispute.

(Q) The company is based in Canada. What currency are the account denominated in?

In US or CAN dollars.

(Q) Account holders can withdraw funds from a FriendlyPay account into any variety of other digital currencies including: Liberty Reserve, e-gold, e-Bullion, 1MDC. Do you also offer the withdrawal of funds by any other methods?

You can withdraw funds to your US or Canadian bank account. Or by check and Wire.

(Q) Do you offer direct withdrawal to a US bank account?

Yes we do, and this is a favored feature to our members. Our members can link direct to their US or CAN banking institution and perform direct deposits or withdrawals. This combined with our exchange functionality makes it especially easy to earn money in other forms such as Egold, and convert those earnings into US or CAN dollars that can be deposited to the member’s bank acct.

This has always been a particular problem for web site owners who are not earning large enough sums to use a direct merchant account with the major credit cards. They choose the alternate forms of ecommerce to make sales but are forced to go thru extra trouble to convert that alternate income to dollars.

(Q) If I were to open an account, I’d probably choose the ‘Low Fee’ account because I’m a cheap guy. Besides lower fees is there any difference between the ‘Regular Account’ and the ‘Low Fee Account’ ?

No, not much difference. The same functionality is present for both types of accounts, the difference is in the cost of each function. Someone who expects to perform many transactions with FP is much better off to go with the paid account because it saves them money in the long run.

(Q) I’m very familiar with UseMyBank, which is a Canadian outfit that offers the direct bank account payments in Canada. Is FriendlyPay similar to UseMyBank?

In a way we are, as we do allow Bill Payments, however we do not offer debit card payments (interac online) as that is not secure enough for us.

(Q) FriendlyPay offers a ‘Bill Pay Feature’ is that popular with your users, is this available outside of Canada?

NO this is not available outside of Canada but we hope to soon.

(Q) From your web it says that account holders can ‘verify’ a bank account. What does it mean to ‘verify’ a bank account and what is required?

This is necessary to validate the identity of the FP member if they wish to link to a US or CAN bank. This involves sending FP documentation that substantiates the member’s identity. Most online currency providers and banks with this kind of access require several documents of current identity such as current phone or utility bill, photo copy of license or Soc. Sec. Card, and similar type verification documents to make sure the applicant is who they say they are.

(Q) Does FriendlyPay have an Anti-Money Laundering policy?

We make every effort we can to put in policies. If using your bank account or requesting a check withdraw you do need to have a verified address and name on the account. We ask for photo ID by way of Passport/Driver Licence (sometimes both), as well as some form of address verification like utility bill. We do what we can to verify the person.

(Q)What guidelines do you follow in order to prevent suspected money laundering, terrorist financing, and threats to the security of Canada (Fintrac)?

We do report known fraudulent activity to the appropriate division.

(Q) Buy Now buttons have become extremely popular with digital currency merchants. I’ve seen from your site you provide this great feature, what other tools do you offer to FriendlyPay merchants?

We also provide a full shopping cart system. This is particularly useful to sites with large inventories of redundant products that can be purchased in multiples. It also allows the shopper to pick an item, then continue shopping for other items until they are finished. Then they go to the “cart” they have filled and proceed to “check out”.

(Q) How fast can I get an account set up?

Account set up is instant.

(Q) Do you require me to send ID?

Not for initial account set up but depending on how you transfer money then we may require ID.

(Q) What are the limits on depositing or withdrawing through another e-currency?

At this time we do not have limits.

Q) How long does it take to ‘verify’ my US bank account for fund withdrawals?

Normally this is done between one to three days.

(Q) I don’t see a debit card on your web and since there are plenty of withdrawal options I suppose you don’t really need one. Does FriendlyPay have any plans to offer users a Canadian issued debit card?

We do and are in the process of adding one (it may be ours or it may be a 3rd party card as we have some options). Look for it near the end of this year if not sooner.

(Q) What does it mean to ‘upgrade’ an account?

This is when you change from the “free” option to the “low fee” member account.

(Q) From your ‘news’ page I found FriendlyPay acts as escrow agent for some real estate investment? What is PPREI and how did FriendlyPay get hooked up with an ‘investment’ company?

Yes this is PPREI, or “Paradise Property Real Estate Investments”. They came to us and we wouldn’t allow them unless they used the Escrow system to protect the members.

(Q) I was reading your User Agreement and it talks about credit card account funding and it sounded similar to PayPal.. Credit card funding seems to be one of the most popular with online shoppers, however on the client account I did not see that as an option, did FriendlyPay used to offer this service? If so, why was it discontinued?

It was stopped due to fraud.

I’d like to thank Tim and James for taking time to answer my questions. If you have not tried FriendlyPay, I encourage you to test their service it has many options unavailable on other systems and a fine track record.

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