How to receive money online in Nigeria

I have blogged a lot about how to make money online in Nigeria but it seems the main issue people are more concerned with, especially freelancers or startups is how they would be able to receive their money online in Nigeria. How does one translate his internet or virtual funds into real or physical money?
Receiving money online is a good thing but you should consider a lot of things such as the fees associated with online payment and its mode.

Cost and mode of online payment
How much will it cost you to receive your online funds in Nigeria? If you are for instance an Adsense publisher, your income normally is kept for you until you reach about $100 or until you opt for payment. Then a cheque will be sent to your registered home address and you will be able to cash it in a Nigerian bank within. So Adsense payment involves a bit of online and offline steps. For payments like those, it may be more costly but if you were able to earn and get your entire payment system on the internet, for instance getting paid via a debit card designed to accept deposits, it would be much more cheaper.
The cost of doing bank to bank wires or Western union can also be high. For doing bank wires, the two parties should have bank accounts denominated in the transacting currency such as the USD and for Nigeria you would need a domiciliary account. The cost for getting it in Nigeria may be as much as 10% while for making withdrawals from your dom account could be fixed at around $20.
For Western union, the sender pays most of the fees and it can be as much as $50 while the receiver pays nothing except for providing the valid identification.
For this reason, it would e much better to just receive your funds online using a Mastercard that allows you to receive payments. Note that this is only good if you are making regular income from the internet since the card has a monthly charge attached to it.

Other ways you could receive money online for much lower fees are Alertpay, 2checkout, Liberty reserve. You could receive and send money easily and affordably using any of these systems. Alertpay allows you to do a lot of things and when it comes to receiving money, you can keep the funds in your account for a long time until it accumulates and then withdraw it to Nigeria without necessary using a bank account by using an Alertpay exchanger and convert it to western union. You may as well withdraw to you domiciliiary bank account from Alertpay when you choose to.

Receiving money into Mastercard and withdrawing to an ATM in Nigeria
One thing most people don't already know is that Mastercard is already in full force in Nigeria and you can use it for a variety of online payment transactions. Although most of the cards we receive from Nigerian banks allow you to withdraw from ATM machines anywhere in the world, in their local currency but it hardly allows you to receive money into it except if you are funding it through your bank. In order to be able to add money to a credit card in Nigeria, you will need to get the funds to your bank or do a transfer from a domicilliary account to that card account. Now how about being able to have other people from around the world just send money into your Mastercard? Well there is a card that can do just that and this eliminates the need for a domicilliary bank account and all the transaction fees mosot of which I would say are hidden costs that you were probably not told when signing up. A card that can do that is called a Payoneer Mastercard.

Introducing Payoneer Mastercard
A Payoneer Mastercard is a prepaid Mastercard that works just like a credit card but it allow you to also receive money online in Nigeria and withdraw it from a Mastercard branded ATM. There is no need for waiting for your money in the mail or for waiting for checks to clear. It is much faster to receive online income with Payoneer.
Here is how it really works if you intend getting one. If you work for an internet company that is a Payoneer partner, you will be able to get a card that allows them to send you monthly earnings when you reach your payment threshold. All you need is to earn about $50 and you will be able to get the card at the first instant mailed to your address in Nigeria. I will write a more comprehensive report on this later on. However if for instance, you write articles or make money from web publishing for a site like Infolinks, you can choose to get paid through a Payoneer card meaning that you no longer have to wait for the traditional 1 or two months to get a cheque first in Nigeria, cash it in a bank, pay many fees before getting your money. With an Infolinks Payoneer Mastercard for instance, you will be able to get credited immediately when they issue payment and you will be able to withdraw it from a Mastercard ATM in Nigeria. No Long thing. Just get paid

Summary
There are several other ways to receive money online in Nigeria and while some allow you to store your money on the internet until you choose to withdraw it, others allow you to withdraw it almost immediately. Some may require a bank account, some may require just identification at a bank while only few allow you to withdraw from an ATM in Nigeria after also accumulating it over a period of time. Whichever you choose, you should consider the costs, convenience and time frame which are all important for your business, especially if it is an internet business.