Do you have less than $50 in your Payoneer account but still looking to withdraw your funds?
It’s quite difficult to do that with Payoneer, and can be frustrating especially if you are not expecting any other payments to come into your Payoneer account.
In that case, your less-than $50 funds gets stuck in your Payoneer account until you are able to receive additional funds.
As a freelancer myself, this is one of the main reasons why I dislike using Payoneer, but coming from Nigeria, our options are quite limited.
Imagine being able to withdraw less than $50 from Fiverr and Upwork, which provides the platform for freelancers to earn money online, but Payoneer, which is just a passage for funds, decides to hold onto the funds until it is up to $50.
This is unfair to small or up-and-coming freelancers who get paid once in a while and in small bits.
I think there should be a campaign by Payoneer users to demand that the withdrawal threshold of Payoneer accounts be reviewed downwards.
Anyways, until that happens, I will be sharing a few ways to get your funds out of Payoneer if it’s less than the $50 withdrawal threshold.
No one should suffer because of the inconsiderate rules set by these payment companies.
Freelancers work very hard for their money, and it should not be deprived from them or dictates when they should be able to withdraw it.
In this article, we’ll look at three ways to withdraw less than $50 from your Payoneer account, especially if you are a freelancer or online entrepreneur from Nigeria.
Let’s dive in.
Use a Payoneer Top-up Service
The fastest way to withdraw less than $50 from Payoneer is to use a Payoneer Top-up Service.
This is unofficial, and kind of a backdoor strategy, but it works in getting your money out of Payoneer ASAP.
Here’s how it works.
You simply pay someone in local currency to send you $50 or more in Payoneer, then you withdraw the sum of that transfer and your original Payoneer balance.
For example, if you have $30 in your Payoneer account, you can pay someone the equivalent of $50 in local currency. Then that person would send you $50 in Payoneer. Now, you have $80 as your Payoneer balance and you can withdraw it whichever way you want.
Use a Payoneer Remittance Service
There are several official Payoneer Remittance services for different countries.
In Nigeria, there are two of them: Calibre Consulting Limited and Kuda Bank.
Transactions from Calibre Consulting are initiated from Payoneer’s end, so you can’t use their services directly for Payoneer withdrawals.
If you have up to $50 in your Payoneer account and you initiate a local bank withdrawal to Nigeria, chances are that the withdrawal would be handled by Calibre Consulting Limited.
On the other hand, withdrawal from Payoneer using Kuda Bank can be initiated from the user’s end.
And the good thing about withdrawing from Payoneer with Kuda is that you can withdraw less than $50 and it can be done within 5 minutes.
Note that the exchange rates used by Kuda Bank are definitely on the low side and less than the official bank rates. So, you’d be losing some quid to the good old FX shark.
But half bread is always better than none, they say.
It is also important to note that the Kuda Bank withdrawal is currently on hold due to the madness going on at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and their failing FX policies.
Once that dust settles, the Kuda Bank withdrawal from Payoneer would be resumed for sure.
Use a Payoneer Virtual Card
The third and definitely not the least effective method for withdrawing less than $50 from Payoneer is via a Payoneer Virtual Card.
If you receive money from Fiverr or Upwork, this should work perfectly, especially with Fiverr.
Fiverr has a kind of debit card partnership with Payoneer that allows them to issue debit cards to freelancers where their income can be loaded directly and ready to be spent.
The card is sometimes branded as a Fiverr revenue card, and could be a physical or virtual card.
I prefer the virtual one because it is issued faster and there’s no chance that it would get lost in transit like the physical card. All in all, you are able to save a huge chunk of your precious time going with the virtual card.
So, once you get the Payoneer virtual card and activate it, you can withdraw your earnings directly to the virtual card Instead of sending it to your main Payoneer account.
This way, you would be free to spend your money even if it is less than $50. You could easily use it to purchase products, services and digital assets online, and get your money working just the way you want it.