US Virtual Bank Account, or how to withdraw money from foreign payment systems

Preamble.

Due to the rapid development of mobile devices and the Google Android OS in particular, interest in developing software for this platform is a very natural phenomenon. As it turned out, it is not much different from the usual Java development for desktop / web, and taking into account the possibility of using the “standard” IDE (Eclipse) by downloading and embedding the Android SDK, as well as having comprehensive documentation, many technical issues are removed by themselves. The conceptual aspect (i.e., the idea for implementation as software) was also not long in coming, since the platform is relatively new, despite the recently released version 2.1, and the competitive environment is not so rich, if we take, for example, development under same iphone. (There could be a detailed part about the software itself, but in view of some nuances, such as the incompleteness of the project and the lack of specific results, let us skip it).
There was the last, and, naturally, the most interesting (logical, isn't it?) Question - a monetary one, and specifically - how to correctly withdraw honestly earned banknotes received from software sales on the Android Market .

I will not go into details, after all, the article is focused on those who are roughly oriented in this topic, I will say briefly - in this case, the Google Checkout online payment processing service is provided, which does not initially work with non-residents of the United States. As far as I know, there are no direct ways to solve this problem, so I had to look for detours.

The plot.

A clear statement of the problem is half the solution. I don’t remember which of the greats said it, but the fact remains that after finding out all the questions regarding checkout, the circle of the search for solutions narrowed a lot, leaving in the end the well-known international payment system Payoneer .

It is known and interesting to us by the fact that it allows you to order (and, at first, absolutely free) prepaid MasterCard plastic card, with which you can withdraw money at any convenient nearby ATM. In combination with the recently introduced US Virtual Bank Account service (hereinafter referred to as VBA), this is very much like “what the doctor has attributed”. Perhaps there are better options, because in this case all sorts of costs in the form of a commission take place, in our case it was considered insignificant. But ... It's not that simple (owners of Payoneer activated cards skip the next paragraph).

In order to activate this service, you need to have their “work” card, i.e. one that has already been successfully transferred money from trusted sources. Nuance - for some reason, at first it was thought that this must necessarily be a US resident, even some gestures were made in this direction, but later it turned out that this is a fairly ordinary money transfer without any additional requirements for the cardholder. Enavey, neither Payoneer cards, nor a dollar account was available, so I had to make another feint with my ears - after ordering the actual Payoner card, I also had to organize a regular dollar Visa Classic and, through oDesk service, spend a couple of penny orders of $ 10-20 for the above “verification” of a Peyonier plastic piece. I will not describe this process in detail either, I think many are familiar with online exchanges, and there are plenty of notes on this topic in the internet blog posts. I can only say that these payments were not 100% fictitious, because they essentially were the development of the above-mentioned software for Android. The software was divided into several parts and “implemented” by means of orders with a fixed (not hourly, it's easier) payment. Although in fact it was shifting money from left pocket to right pocket, it is not prohibited to do this. Thus, the Payoneer card was activated almost for free - the money for the “orders” was immediately withdrawn, and the deposit of $ 10. for the customer services odeska was returned on time safe and sound. As a side effect of the above manipulations, there are still two Odeskovo accounts - a buyer and a service provider with a good credit history, and, of course, “extra” Visa Classic with a shelf life of up to 201x the far year.

It is worth noting that all the movements were accomplished in sane terms, the Payoneer support service did great work (this is not Strelnikov’s product placement, but a subjective assessment after a real cooperation act). By the way, they have a couple of Russian-speaking people there, so even for those who know little English, everything will be intuitive and clear; if you make Skype calls, there are no problems at all, cheap and cheerful. One “but” - the processing of applications by the English caliper is much faster. Not to compare with PrivatBank - in order to open for payment via the Internet (read Privat24 - online banking system, crooked and buggy by the way), you had to double-cut the Visa card to the central office and even manually write an application addressed to the branch director ( ?) In payonira, they even took a scan of the Ukrainian passport with a bang, although, it would seem, they would need at least an overseas passport, with a Latin spelling of the name and surname.
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Now, in fact, “closer to the body,” as Guy de Maupassant said. The VBA service seems to be still in the beta testing stage, and its activation for each individual client is done manually. At least, I did not find another way than to terrorize the caliper again.
So, what was done specifically step by step:

1) From your personal account at Payoneer, a standard application for a support was filled in (name, soap, the last 4 digits of the card number, just in case, are sketched, and why do you need them):


2) After a couple of days, it became clear that the processing of these particular messages was done by another department, or simply by other people, and maybe the evil fate was played by the factor that Russian was originally chosen, in general, it was decided to duplicate the query also on soap:


As you can see, the letter is written in a free format, it states that I want to open VBA and is ready to provide all the necessary information in order to be allowed to use this service. It seems to be a trifle, but, nevertheless, there are cases when, for a number of reasons, people were rejected.

3) A quick response came from a certain Claudia Chvaicer @ Payoneer.com, which wrote the following:


In a nutshell, she writes that a virtual US bank account is a service that allows you to make ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments and upload them directly to a Payoneer card. The cost of such happiness is only $ 20 per year and 2% of the value of transactions. As for me, it is quite a reasonable deal, as they say. To begin a virtual interview, you must provide information about the products and services that you plan to provide, from whom to receive payments, what the address of the company's website, as well as additional information, if any.

4) None of the above military secrets, so without hesitation, the following reply was written and sent:


Please note that I did not make a secret of the fact that I have an EIN (Employer Identification Number) in the US Tax Service and I am registered there as a private individual developer.

By the way, about the EIN - it is a necessary attribute for the subsequent "correct" registration in the market, and, of course, a guarantee that you will be considered an honest taxpayer in the United States. I suspect that it was his presence that caused the rapid application of a request to open VBA. And yet - if someone wants to do it for himself, do not be fooled by this kidalovo - we are talking about companies that register it for $ 50-100. Call on Skype in the US, answer the questionnaire, wait a couple of minutes while they check the base to see if you already have them on the list, it will cost you only $ 2–3 (!!!). Then the operator will dictate to you letters, tsiferki, and all. So as not to paint the entire process in detail, below is a link to an example of a correctly completed application “Application for Employer Identification Number” (for employers, corporations, partnerships, trusts, estates, churches, government agencies, Indian tribal entities, certain individuals, and others) , there is nothing complicated there - we don’t fill in any kind of purely American features like a social security number, if we don’t own a company, in general we don’t touch half of the questionnaire.
Form SS-4 (.pdf)

5) In the following response letter from the caliper, information came in that VBA was activated:


Moreover, we are kindly informed that using VBA you can also cash money with PayPal. Miracle, is not it?)

The fact that everything works, you can immediately verify by looking at the “US Virtual Account” item of the “Services” menu:


Voila, this is what we need, namely, the counter at First Bank of Delaware , which is in the Americans:


Bank Routing Number - the bank code (you can be convinced here ), Account Number - the actual account number.

A document with information on VBA is not a secret, so I also post it for everyone who wants to see .

Now you can use this service for the benefit of yourself or others :). How to get attached to Google Checkout or besides PayPal, I think it will not be difficult to figure it out. That is all. I hope this article is written in an accessible and understandable way, and for someone, it will come in handy. If something is not clear, try to answer in the comments. Thanks for attention.

*** edit ***
In connection with the order of a new plastic card, the question arose whether it was necessary to re-activate the VBA service. Although this is logical, confirmation by the manager will not hurt:
“As soon as you receive and activate a new card, the money and services related to your existing card will be transferred automatically to the new card.”
ps Comrade torai conducted research on Payoneer partners. I advise you to read , come in handy when ordering a card.