how does egold work for merchants? Is it the same as paypal? With egold do you need to pay anything to open a merchant account? and can you accept credit cards with it?
Well, e-gold is not a liquid currency. It is not the same as paypal since e-gold provides 0% protection to the buyer but 100% protection to the seller. Also e-gold is not an easily traded currency. With Paypal, you are trading in US$ or one of the few currencies you can use but e-gold is a virtual currency technically pegged to the price of gold. E-Gold does not allow you to convert real money to e-gold and back to real money through their system, you will need to find a 3rd party exchanger or anyone here who is willing to do the exchange for you. It is basically just virtual currency. E-gold does not allow credit card payments so as to get away with the chargebacks and other banking regulations. What you need to do is :- 1) Sign up for an e-gold account 2) Find an exchanger to convert real money to e-gold 3) Use e-gold to pay someone in e-gold 4) If you receive payment, you will then need to find an exchanger who would exchange e-gold back to real money again. While paypal allows you to hook on your bank account or credit card or use existing paypal funds to pay someone in real money. You can withdraw in real money too.
You can fund your e-gold account with 3rd party exchanger and you can withdraw money same way for example http://www.icegold.com is reputable exchanger that fund & withdraw to/from your e-gold account via Wire transfer all money in E-Gold is backed up by gold bars , E-Gold is easy to use system I don't know why some people call it virtual money , if it is then paypal is virtual too you can withdraw egold money directly to your bank account with 2% fee on exchanger www.icegold.com , so what's the difference beside it's international and worldwide while paypal is only for limited countries if you are managing online business iand you looking to get international customer then E-Gold is good choice , if you looking only for limited countries (US/CA/UK/AUS/Germany ...) then paypal will be good for you more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold
e-gold can be used as an online medium of payment.I have mostly seen e-gold in HYIP'S. In HYIP'S related website, a fixed amount of egold is deposted in HYIP'S and then after few days, your egold deposit gets multiplied in the form of interest earned amount. You can then withdraw the extra earned funds.But most HYIP'S related website are all fake.