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Paying for a VPS with WebMoney: wallets, fees and refunds
WebMoney remains one of the oldest ways to pay for hosting, and many providers with a long history still keep it on their list. It works differently from a bank card: the payment leaves a wallet, it cannot be reversed through a bank, and renewals almost always have to be paid manually. Here is what is important to know before paying for a VPS this way.
How payment works
A host's website usually offers two options, and both end with confirmation in WebMoney:
- A payment page. You choose WebMoney when topping up the balance, land on the system's page, sign in to your wallet and confirm the payment with a code or in the app.
- An invoice to your WMID. The host issues an invoice to your identifier, it appears in your Keeper inbox, and you pay it from there.
After confirmation the money reaches the host immediately, and the balance is topped up automatically. If this hasn't happened within a few minutes, don't pay a second time: find the transaction in your wallet history and send its number to support.
Wallet currency and conversion
Funds in WebMoney are held in title units tied to currencies: dollar, euro, rouble and others. A host does not accept all of them. A foreign provider most often expects a dollar wallet, a Russian one a rouble wallet, and the set of rouble titles and the rules for using them have changed over recent years. Before paying, check exactly which wallet is named on the payment page.
If the plan is priced in dollars and you have a rouble wallet, you will first have to make an internal exchange between your own wallets. The exchange rate inside the system differs from the market rate, so the real price of the server may turn out higher than the converted figure in the table. Prices in this selection are converted into one currency for comparison, and the final amount is shown on the payment page.
Also check the address of the page where you enter your wallet password. Phishing copies of the WebMoney sign-in page have been around for a long time, and a stolen wallet is harder to recover than a card is to reissue. Go to payment only from the host's account, turn on transaction confirmation through the app, and check the recipient and the amount before confirming.
Fees and limits
- System fee. On a transfer from a wallet, WebMoney withholds a small percentage, usually less than one per cent of the amount, with an upper cap. The sender, that is you, pays it.
- Host surcharge. Some providers add their own fee for this method or give a worse top-up rate than for card payments.
- Passport level. The level of your WebMoney passport (attestat), that is, how thoroughly your identity is verified, determines the limits on balances and transactions. With the minimum level, a large payment, for example for a year in advance, may not go through.
- Minimum top-up. Sometimes it is more than the monthly cost of a cheap plan.
Refunds and disputes
A WebMoney transfer is irreversible: there is no issuing bank that could dispute the transaction. Only the host can return the money, and it does so under its terms of service, most often as credit to the balance in your account and less often as a transfer back to your wallet. If a provider fails to meet its obligations, you can file a claim with WebMoney arbitration inside the system, but the procedure is long and requires evidence: keep the transaction numbers and your correspondence with support.
If the host has agreed to refund money to your wallet, check that it sends it to the same WMID and in the same currency you paid in. A refund to a wallet of another type means one more internal exchange and a loss on the rate, and nobody can reverse an erroneous transfer to someone else's identifier.
So it makes sense to start with a short period. Plans with a refund written into the terms are collected in the VPS with a money-back guarantee selection, and for temporary tasks hourly billing works well: the topped-up balance is spent only on the hours actually used.
Renewal without automatic charges
A host usually cannot charge your wallet automatically. Keeper has a trust setting that lets a website withdraw funds without confirmation within a limit, but hosts rarely use it. In practice you pay for every renewal yourself, so:
- turn on notifications about renewal invoices and a low balance;
- enter your WMID in your host profile: support finds payments faster by it;
- find out how many days the server is kept after the paid period ends before it is deleted;
- for an important project, top up the balance in advance or keep a second payment method, for example a Mir card (Russia's national card system).
If you prefer an e-wallet with a rouble account and receipts issued under Russian rules, compare the terms with the VPS paid with YooMoney selection. The payment methods of each plan are shown in the "Payment" column.