Skrill: e-money account, payments and transfers explained

Skrill is an e-money account: a place to hold pre-paid money electronically and use it to send, spend and receive money online. Electronic money, or e-money, is money you store on cards, devices, online systems and digital databases for making payments, and the Financial Ombudsman Service names Skrill alongside PayPal, Revolut and Tide as one of the services that count as electronic money¹.

Skrill appears on the Financial Conduct Authority register with firm reference number 900001 and a status of Registered². Its permission is issuing electronic money, and its registered trading names are Skrill Quick Checkout, Skrill, Send Direct and Rapid Transfer². The company behind the brand was incorporated on 27 July 2001 and remains active³.

That register entry matters for one practical reason: Skrill is not a bank, so the protection around your money works differently from a current account. The sections below set out what Skrill offers, how its charges work, who can open an account, how to keep it secure, and what happens if something goes wrong.

What Skrill is: an e-money account for sending, spending and receiving money online

An e-money account holds money you have paid in, in electronic form, and lets you use it to make payments. The Financial Ombudsman Service describes electronic money as pre-paid money stored electronically on cards, devices, online systems and digital databases for making payments, and lists Skrill among the services that fall under that heading¹. The same category includes PayPal, Revolut and Tide¹.

In practice that means an account you top up, hold a balance in, and pay out from, rather than a current account with an overdraft and a banking licence behind it. Money can move in from a card or bank transfer, sit in the account, and go out to a merchant, to another person, or to an account in another country. An international money transfer, as the Financial Ombudsman Service defines it, allows people to send funds from a UK account to another account in a different country⁵.

Skrill sits in the same broad market as other digital wallets and payment services. Klarna, for example, has launched a digital wallet that lets customers store e-money, add or withdraw funds, and earn cashback on certain purchases⁶. Mobile wallet services linked to a debit or credit card, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, have also entered the market and give consumers further payment choices at the checkout⁷.

What Skrill is not is a bank account. That distinction drives almost everything else on this page, from how your money is held to what happens if the firm fails.

Skrill's related brands: Neteller, Paysafe and Rapid Transfer

The FCA register entry for Skrill lists four current trading names: Skrill Quick Checkout, Skrill, Send Direct and Rapid Transfer². Those are the names you will see on the site and in checkout pages, and they all sit under the same registration.

Neteller is a separate brand in the same payments sector rather than a trading name listed on Skrill's register entry². If you are trying to work out whether two accounts are connected, the register entry is the place to check: it lists the trading names a firm operates under, and anything not listed there is not part of that registration.

Rapid Transfer appears as a trading name in its own right, which is why it gets its own section below on how it is used².

Skrill and Moneybookers: the same firm under a former name

Moneybookers and Moneybookers Ltd appear on the FCA register as previous names of Skrill². The two names refer to the same firm, so an old Moneybookers account is a Skrill account under a newer name.

Renaming is common in financial services and does not by itself change what a firm is allowed to do. TransUnion, for example, was formerly CallCredit⁸. What matters for a customer is whether the registration, the permissions and the protection stay the same, and here they do: the same firm reference number, 900001, covers the business under both names².

If you are checking whether a message claiming to be from Skrill is genuine, the former name is worth knowing about. A communication that refers to Moneybookers is not automatically fraudulent, but the firm's current name is Skrill, and the register entry is the authoritative record of what it is called now².

How Skrill's charges work

Skrill is a commercial payment service, so it charges for the things it does rather than paying interest on a balance. Charges typically attach to specific actions: moving money in or out, converting between currencies, sending money to another person, and using the account for business or merchant payments. The exact figures change, and this site does not carry them, so the current schedule is the one published on Skrill's own site².

The way to read any payment service's charges is to match them to what you actually do with the account. Someone who tops up and spends in the same currency has a different cost profile from someone who receives money in one currency and withdraws it in another, because conversion is where many e-money services earn their margin. A dormant account that is never used may still attract a fee under some providers' terms.

Two general points are worth holding on to. First, a charge is only part of the cost: the exchange rate applied to a conversion can matter more than the headline fee, and it is set by the provider rather than published as a single number. Second, charges are separate from the protection question. Paying a fee does not buy you FSCS cover, because the FSCS does not cover payment services at all⁴.

Who can open a Skrill account

Skrill is an online service, so opening an account means registering on its website and completing identity checks rather than visiting a branch. The FCA register entry gives the firm's website address as https://www.skrill.com/en/².

Identity verification is standard across financial services and is the reason you will be asked for documents. Guidance on protecting your identity is clear that documents carrying personal information, such as your driving licence, passport, bank statements and utility bills, should be stored in a safe and secure place⁹. The same documents are what a payment firm will ask to see, so it is worth knowing where they are before you start.

Age and residency rules vary between providers, and Skrill's own terms set out who it will accept. As a comparison, NS&I's Junior ISA rules show how differently providers treat age: children aged 16 or 17 can open their own account, while for children under 16 only a parent or legal guardian can open one¹⁰. Payment accounts set their own thresholds, and the account terms are where to check them.

If you are weighing up whether an e-money account or a bank account suits you better, MoneyHelper's guidance on choosing a bank account sets out the questions worth asking before you commit¹¹.

Using Skrill online: Quick Checkout, Send Direct and Rapid Transfer

Skrill's register entry names three product trading names alongside the main brand: Skrill Quick Checkout, Send Direct and Rapid Transfer². Each does a different job.

Skrill Quick Checkout is the payment gateway side of the business: the checkout a merchant uses when a customer pays online. If you have paid for something on a site and seen Skrill offered as a payment method, that is this product.

Send Direct is the person-to-person side: sending money to someone else rather than paying a merchant.

Rapid Transfer is the transfer product, used for moving money between accounts, including across borders. An international money transfer, in the Financial Ombudsman Service's definition, allows people to send funds from a UK account to another account in a different country⁵.

Online accounts of this kind are typically managed through an app or a browser. The Consumer Council describes online banking as a quick and easy way of checking your balance, paying bills and transferring money via your smartphone, tablet or computer⁷. E-money accounts follow the same pattern, with the balance and the transaction history held in the app rather than in a passbook.

For the wider picture on moving money, including the difference between sending within the UK and sending abroad, see Sending money in the UK and abroad.

Keeping a Skrill account secure

The security advice for an e-money account is the same as for a bank account, and it is worth taking literally. Use strong and unique passwords to protect your online accounts, and set separate passwords for different accounts rather than reusing one¹². Keep your anti-virus software up to date¹³.

Your login details are the whole of your security. Guidance from several sources is consistent: banks will never ask for your full PIN or password, and instead ask for specific numbers or letters, such as the first and third character¹⁴. A bank will never ask for your PIN, or for a whole security number or password, either over the phone or by email¹⁵. Your bank will never phone you to ask for your PIN number or password, or to ask you to transfer money to another account¹⁶. Banks will never contact you to ask for your personal identification number or for a whole security number or password¹⁷. Your bank or the police will never ask for your PIN or password or ask you to transfer funds for fraud reasons¹⁸.

If you think someone else has accessed an account, the standard response is to change your password straight away and contact the provider¹⁹. The same principle applies to any online account, including a payment account.

Skrill will never ask for your password or PIN

This is the single most useful rule for anyone holding an e-money account, and it is stated the same way by regulators, charities and fraud bodies.

The FSCS makes the same commitment about its own contact: it will never ask for bank details, account passwords, or PIN numbers¹⁸. Independent guidance for older people puts it just as plainly: a bank will never ask you for your PIN or password¹⁶.

So if a message, call or email claims to be from Skrill and asks for your password, your PIN, a whole security number, or a transfer of funds, treat it as a fraud attempt rather than a security check. The same applies to anyone asking you to move money to a "safe account", which is a common fraud script¹⁸.

If you have already given details away, change your password immediately and contact the provider¹⁹. Reporting the attempt helps too: scam reports feed into the data that payment firms and the regulator use to spot patterns, and the Payment Systems Regulator has pushed for better data sharing and the roll-out of the name-checking service Confirmation of Payee to help prevent scams²⁰.

For more on recognising and reporting fraud, see Scams and fraud: a complete guide.

How your money is protected with Skrill: e-money, not a bank account

This is the section that matters most, and the answer is narrower than most people expect.

Skrill is an e-money firm, not a bank. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme states plainly that it cannot protect you if an e-money firm or payment services firm fails⁴. It also does not cover cases where the payments firm itself fails, though it may "look through" the payments firm to compensate its customers if the firm's UK safeguarding bank fails²¹.

What that means in practice is that e-money firms must keep customer money safe under e-money rules, typically in a separate account at a bank, but that protection is not the same as FSCS cover. MoneyHelper's guidance describes the position for a virtual current account covered by e-money rules: your money is kept safe, but you would need to make a claim to the administrator if your provider failed¹¹. Klarna's balance product carries the same warning, that money held with e-money institutions is not covered by the FSCS⁶.

For comparison, FSCS deposit protection covers up to £120,000 in total across all accounts a person holds, either in their own name or where they are listed as the beneficial owner²². That limit applies to banks and building societies, not to e-money accounts.

Two other protections are worth knowing about, because they apply to how you pay rather than to the account itself. Paying by credit card, debit card or PayPal rather than bank transfer gives more protection on a purchase²³. And money paid by bank transfer is not protected unless you pay by credit card or Direct Debit²⁴.

If you have a complaint about an e-money service that the firm has not resolved, the Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints about electronic money¹ and about sending money abroad⁵. For the wider framework, see Consumer protection in UK financial services.