WARNING: Skrill turns withdrawal fee from flat to % based!!!!

This is the letter I received today:

Dear ______,

We would like to inform you of upcoming changes to the transactional fees we charge when you withdraw funds from your Skrill Account to your bank account.

Effective 12 January 2026, a percentage fee of 1.75% of the amount withdrawn or a minimum fee of EUR 3.50 (or the equivalent amount in your transfer currency) shall be applied for transfers initiated from your Skrill Account to your bank account.

The applicable fee for your transfer will be either 1.75% of the amount withdrawn or EUR 3.50 (or the equivalent amount in your transfer currency), whichever is higher. Before you finalise any transaction, both the amount withdrawn and the applicable fee will be clearly displayed in your Skrill Account.

Your continued use of the Skrill services after January 12, 2026, shall be taken as your acceptance of these changes. For more details about payment options and applicable fees, please visit the Fees Section on the Skrill website.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out using one of our customer support channels.

Sadly this means that the flat fee of 5.50 EUR per transfers will be gone and for something like a 10,000 EUR commission, you'd have to pay 175 EUR, since I did not see a cap on the fee anywhere mentioned in their T&Cs. Has anyone else received this? Can this be right? It seems like an absurd sum especially for EU residents used to SEPA.

It is true, same also received for Neteller.

I have been charged a % based fee for the last 12 months. It says fee of 1.8% or a $7 minimum whichever is higher.

So they are just continuing with the change for the remaining countries that have been left on a flat fee, would be my guess.

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Originally Posted by xecutable

So they are just continuing with the change for the remaining countries that have been left on a flat fee, would be my guess.

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Yeah seems that way, the % fee use to be 7% for me, but once i hit VIP it dropped to 1.8%

Crazy numbers especially if there's no cap and your payments are 5+ figures. I actually just closed my 17 year old account. In this iGaming ecosystem, affiliates appear to be the punching bag. Essentially Skrill just became a sub-affiliate for all of our brands, but instead of coming out of the program's pocket it comes out of ours.

That's not good. I moved the one account that was on Skrill away to bank transfer only recently, but that certainly puts me off using that option in the future - thanks for the heads-up.

Haven't received this email in the UK yet.

I have two brands paying into Skrill just to keep the account running but I will be moving them over to bank transfer when this kicks in

Skrill is a garbage for 15 years or so. But those fees are sadly about right. I mean by that that those fees are the market rates of financial institutions that openly support affiliate marketing/gambling.

Indeed there are still plenty of options using just a normal bank. We can discuss all year long whether affiliate marketing is or is not gambling. For banks it is a gambling, especially revenue share is. As my banker said: we must close your account, because if we have to do the compliance, we must see source of funds of any customer of yours, who you recommended to all of your affiliate programs. He was well aware how absurd it is, but that is the reality we live in.

So there were a lot of quasi-financial institutions that emerged and some of them aimed at gambling and affiliate marketing. Indeed it is absurd, because they are also regulated by the same rules, but they can bend those AML rules.

Quotes that I got when I had troubles with my last bank account (where I also pay hefty money, because to keep my account open I must invest to some obscure obligations that yield negative interest for 10 years) were about this:

5000 CHF/EUR to open the account
some more fees for multicurrency

2-8% fees for incoming payments (depends whether the payment is affiliate marketing or gambling and whether the money go from high risk country or not [high risk is not Russia or North Korea, but Malta, Curacao or Gibraltar])

Some flat fees for payouts

Skrill is defacto exactly this kind of institution. So their new fees are still low, but I guess they still have that horrible CS and they block the accounts randomly so it is a tough choice.

The industry is dead, so everyone is trying to get the biggest piece of the cadaver.

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Originally Posted by Sherlock

Skrill is a garbage for 15 years or so.

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It's the same for Neteller, when I was a customer with them. They were a pain to use, because they kept constantly asking for documentation in order to verify myself to them and to continue using the account. They also had a high and unrealistic processing fee at that time, some years ago now.

Neteller and Skrill are the same company since approx. 10 years ago. But they were both bad even before.

How Neteller (originally based on circumvention of gambling payments for US customers) survived in 2006 UIGEA I never understood.

Yup they are. Their picture requirement for verification was absurd. Pictures used for Paypal,Skrill and Wise, did not pass Neteller's standards, so I never bother with them.

As for percentages, my brands' processor that can do crypto takes 1.25%. I'd rather use that and have the money in my ledger than stick with Skrill.

Sure, crypto is the way. But those fees (crypto and gambling) will be equalized and most countries will force us to register the wallet addresses somehow.

Everything is evolving to the system described in Ubik by P.K. Dick, where we will make payments even to open a door of the fridge or using a sidewalk.

But indeed it is not the end of everything. Market will come with some more direct way. It can be the crypto direct somehow. Probably something else, unseen and something that will make few people filthy rich.

For sure own wallet + lower fees are the option now. Also much more banks are still willing to accept fiat from crypto than fiat from gambling area.

In fact the AML is a farce at banks. Not that I am doing what I will describe, but it works. Imagine you buy for example 1 BTC. You send fiat from bank A, you buy BTC at some exchange. Ok, then you sell the BTC and you cash out money at bank A again. But you can open a bank B account and cash 1 BTC from affiliate marketing and throw at them paper that you bought that BTC actually. They might do some blockchain analysis, but they will just track the fiat from the exchange to bank B, which will be clean. The same can be done with bank C, D, E...

Those people doing this are just dumb and since most users have problem to make a proper screenshot, one can always selectively choose on the screenshot, what you want your bank to see. It is not a fake screenshot. And if you mix 100 BTC from affiliate marketing with 1 BTC that you bought and you open 100+1 bank accounts, in the end no one knows which BTC was converted in fiat withdrawn to a concrete bank. It is kind of like an execution, where are more executioners. Also it is impossible to say who was the killer.

How this will be in EU idk, from the new year iirc there is a law that crypto exchanges must report everything to state. That itself will be a big privacy catastrophe with deadly (literally) consequences. But I am sure EU is that crazy that they will extend this reporting even to the banks (exchanges and banks will share all the data between themselves), so it will be basically an open book for everyone.

This Skrill change happened a while back in the UK, I had a fairly decent amount still in Skrill so got
charged a fair whack to withdraw my remaining 5-figure balance. I've now stopped using Skrill, so
they got a nice big payout, but lost a long-term customer. Guess they're not bothered, they
made more in that one big fee than they probably ever did before in total.

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Originally Posted by RacingJim

This Skrill change happened a while back in the UK, I had a fairly decent amount still in Skrill so got
charged a fair whack to withdraw my remaining 5-figure balance. I've now stopped using Skrill, so
they got a nice big payout, but lost a long-term customer. Guess they're not bothered, they
made more in that one big fee than they probably ever did before in total.

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Really. I have a business account with them in the UK and I am still able to withdraw with the £3.51 flat fee no matter the amount. I did it just now and withdrew four figures only paying the flat fee.

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Originally Posted by Mattbar

Really. I have a business account with them in the UK and I am still able to withdraw with the £3.51 flat fee no matter the amount. I did it just now and withdrew four figures only paying the flat fee.

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That's bizarre! I've been charged a wedge.

Email I got on 13th Jan 2024, so ages ago:

Dear Customer,We are contacting you to let you know we are making changes and clarifications to the transactional fees we charge when you withdraw funds from your Skrill Account to your bank account.

On 20 December 2023, as per prior communication, a bank transfer fee of 3.99%, depending on your transaction amount, but no less than €3.50 (or the equivalent amount in the currency you make the transfer in) was introduced.

On 15 January 2024, we are decreasing our fee on bank transfers from 3.99% to 1.75% for all UK users. The new applicable fee is 1.75%, depending on your transaction amount, but no less than €3.50 (or the equivalent amount in the currency you make the transfer in). We will charge the fee of 1.75% or the minimum €3.50 fee, whichever is higher. Please note that the transfer amount and the fee we charge will always appear in the app before you finalise a transaction.

Example: if you transfer €1,000 from your Skrill Account balance to your bank account, you will be charged €17.50 in fees. In the contrary, if you transfer €100 from your Skrill Account balance to your bank account, you will be charged €3.50 in fees.

Please note that no currency conversion is involved in the example outlined above. Additional charges as per the Skrill Account Terms of Use may apply where currency conversion is involved.

Your continued use of the Skrill services after 15 January 2024 will be taken as your acceptance of these changes. You can find information about all available payment options and applicable fees in the Fees Section on the Skrill website.

If you have any questions, please use one of our customer support channels for assistance.

Kind regards,

The Skrill Team

Then like an idiot, I completely forgot about this email and let almost £30k build up in my Skrill.

So have just been charged around £500 at 1.75% to withdraw it. Doh!

Wondering why I got targeted for the fee rise and not others, seems bizarre.
Possibly I have a personal Skrill account and you have a business account, that can be the only
thing I can see different.

Oh well, they lost my custom anyway, all goes into bank now.
Guess they are happy to take my lost custom but get a one off £500 win.
Probably their tactic for high value accounts.

I've stopped using it a long time ago, bank wire directly from aff program is by far the cheapest option.

Skrill has become so greedy with their fees, and their customer service is totally delayed. I’ve been waiting more than 10 days for a reply to my ticket. They just don’t care. We work with a few affiliate programs that pay via Skrill and they can’t change the method yet, and wire transfer isn’t an option. I think all affiliate programs should add crypto as a payment method so it’s the most convenient option for me personally.