Who are the heros of tomorrow: Numox, Perfect Money or AlterGold?

While the talks about the further fate of e-gold, ceaseless ddos-attacks on liberty reserve, dying Fethard and other problems in the industry of e-finances continue, a worthy newbies appear on the scene. They are only newbies but they stand firmly on their feet and are full of ambitions to conquer the world. We can say with confidence that not all of them will be able to come up to the top, and we, as the experts in electronic finances, should foresee early enough which payment systems will overcome all the obstacles and will move to the upper stage of the evolution.

A thorough analysis of the situation on the market has shown that the most popular and actively promoted payment systems today are AlterGold, Perfect Money and Numox. One of them the analysts will most likely give a title of the Debutant of the year. Let’s try to find out which of them is the most worthy to be given this title to.

First of all, let’s rely on our first impression. What do we see when we open the sites of our ‘heroes’?

The first thing that catches the eye when you open the main page of Numox is a creative approach to the site design. We can even say that the developers went too far with the intensity of vinous and lilac colors that do not look serious against a background of a griffin. However, from the navigation point of view the first page is very convenient as the sign-up button for opening a new account strikes against the background of the currency signs depicted on a vinous canvas as a gold ware. Generally speaking by the admission of the most designers such obvious hint at cash and gold bars may be very good in design but not in 2008. Today it is rather a step towards the past than the future, with a smack of a platitude and banality.

The site of AlterGold Company stands out from the Numox one by more colorful decisions. Mainly it is a combination of orange and blue colors. Despite the word “gold” in the name of the company it does not back up its currency by the real gold. On the contrary, the founders of the payment system give an immediate resume which stresses the peculiarities of the AlterGold work. We cannot understand the confidence of the system founders when they emphasize the fact that the electronic currency of AlterGold is fully backed by US dollar. It is not clear at all why they do stress this fact against the world economic crisis, rapidly decreasing dollar rate and obvious decrease of the trust to the green currency around the world.

Also, the first page of AlterGold informs us that any user has an opportunity to keep his or her funds in any of 19 listed currencies of the world. Probably, it would not be out of place to list them all, however a mess on the site urges not to do this. The thing is that unlike the main page, the description of the accounts and in the FAQs show a different number of available currencies - 22. At the first narrow-minded sight such a great number of currencies is very impressive but after a careful consideration from the economic point of view, it becomes clear what stands behind those 22 currencies. Most likely, the founders of AlterGold want to earn on the cross-rates of the currencies. The idea is good and we were about to add one point to the score of AlterGold for this know-how. However, the experience and opinions of the coryphaei in payment systems say that the Internet-business is almost always oriented to the international audience and the calculations are made in 6 standard currencies at the minimum. To be more precise we can say that according to the estimations of Trainex analysts up to 99% of settlement operations are based on the electronic equivalent of dollar and gold. Thus, the super multi-currency account is a good but almost useless decision.

After opening the main page of Perfect Money one can understand that the system decided to omit various pretentious tricks and slogans. The site is rather stylish and meets the financial themes. Probably, the noble Swiss blood is felt everywhere – there is nothing excessive on the site, only a well-combined color gamma - red, white, blue and black. But even with all the strictness in styles, Perfect Money introduces a new creative element which unconsciously attracts the users.

During the whole period of presence on the site we can see a steering wheel with some metric gauges against the black background, which ergonomically fits the design, and probably is intended to show the possibilities of the users to manage their funds by controlling the situation with gauges at the maximum. The presence of the pronounced short slogan “Perfect Money - Just perfect”, which demonstrates all the signs of the corporate culture of the payment system, also made us pleased.

The system announces the absence of fees for internal transactions right from the start - on the main page. A favorable difference of Perfect Money against AlterGold and Numox is a multi-language interface (11 languages), which in our opinion speaks about the integration of Perfect Money into the world virtual economy. It also shows the seriousness of intentions. The site is available in the following languages: English, French, German, Russian, Greek, Chinese, Italian, Portugal, Spanish, Korean and Japanese. Also there is an announcement about the coming Arabic version.

According to aggregate data, the contest for the best site impression is won by Perfect Money. This Swiss payment system more than others prepossesses the users. It is kept in strict business tones with the elements of the national Swiss red flag. Perfect Money is also an obvious winner with its simplicity of interface, comprehensibility and clearness of the content. The system is rich in hints, and, moreover, PM provides a tour over the system and a detailed ‘Help’ section which is based on flash technologies and helps to understand the main functions of the payment system.

Now, let’s change from the general description to the specific technical characteristics and functions of these sites.

When registering an account in all three systems we, as usual, have to put our name, address and home country and etc. It is interesting that while Numox and Perfect Money have listed the countries alphabetically, AlterGold decided to stand out and to distinguish some countries by listing them out of the alphabetic order. This action of AlterGold can be regarded as a bad manner and an act of disrespect, as the company has put the countries that are the most attractive (in its opinion) first and then listed all the “rest”.

Considering the multicurrency of Numox and AlterGold, we want to note the preference of the latter in the immediacy of the data on the charged fees. Numox have cunningly put a word “free” into the column “deposit/withdraw fee” but this FREE is applicable only to the deposit of funds via exchangers. The exact amount to be paid for the exchange of the same Perfect Money to Numox currency and the exchange rate will be known only when entering the page of the e-currency exchanger. And voilà! You will pay 3% fee for purchasing Numox currency for Perfect Money. Bravo! In its fee chart Numox marked this service in capitals to be FREE, and right there it placed some fine print “Only fees of our certified exchangers”. It’s strange enough that Numox itself does not sell its own currency but leaves it to exchangers which charge a considerable interest for their services. Here is the nice “Free”! In this respect, AlterGold, undoubtedly, is more honest. Having chosen deposit or withdraw options, you immediately get the window with the fields to be filled out to immediately receive the data on the amount of money (in dollars) the system will charge. It also shows the same figure in percentage. So you don’t need to count how much the currency you want to use in the system will cost in dollars. Calculations are made automatically according to the current rate. Therefore, having chosen for example a Singapore, you will immediately know how much it costs in dollars and what is the total fee for deposit and conversion.
Perfect Money made the accounts of its clients more conventional, namely dollar, euro and gold accounts. It is also worth mentioning that such approach makes the navigation in the member area and the accounting part of account management easier.

And though Perfect Money cannot brag about the multicurrency of its service, nevertheless the deposit and withdrawal of money, as well as the interest related to these operations are much clearer and more comprehensive than all those conversions in Numox and AlterGold. And unlike Numox you don’t need to first open an account somewhere in other payment system and load it by any means adopted there and only then to be “welcomed” be the precious and golden world of Numox (via some exchanger). In Perfect Money the readers have an opportunity to load the account with webmoney, e-gold, pecunix, wire transfer or via certified exchange partners. A withdrawal can be made the same way. Such protection means as sms-authentication, IP-identification and CodeCard make Perfect Money the absolute leader among the considered systems.

The only question to Perfect Money is why does the system headquartered in Switzerland provides deposit/withdraw services via a Cyprus bank? However, from the financial point of view such behavior can be easily explained as Cyprus is an excellent offshore and this means that the algorithm of money loading in system via the offshore bank probably allows economizing money not only for the owners of Perfect Money but its customers as well.

There is one more question to Numox payment system. It’s rather not a question but an interrogative exclamation regarding the background of the founder of Numox. We are interested whether Numox has the same future that the hyip created by the founder of Numox, Peter Takac, had. The hyip was named GoldReturn. Peter Takac was initially telling that he was going to create a HYIP to create a payment system with the earned money. Recently the American economic edition, Ecommerce Journal, has provided a detailed story about this occasion, having told the world the whole truth about this person.

To conclude, the analysis of the three systems has shown that today the best characteristics of reliability, vitality and professionalism is shown by the Swiss payment system - Perfect Money. This choice is also made due to the fact that when we were finishing writing the present article (30.06.2008) AlterGold and Numox were unavailable and their sites didn’t open. The conclusion suggests itself – the system unavailable for several hours or even days hardly has a right to live. And as it is known, money doesn’t like excessive stirs, ballyhoo and an unpredictable behavior. Money likes silence...

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