On February 19, the English payment platform Skrill, and the Canadian Neteller, notified their users residing in Venezuela that they will stop providing services in the country.

The announcement of Both platforms were done individually and separately for each user, via email (Neteller email, Skrill email). In both cases, the platforms limited themselves to saying that the reason for the cessation of operations was given by a business decision ; plus some people speculate that this is due to the sanctions taken by the government of Donald Trump against the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Although as of February 19 the platforms stopped receive money , users of these will be able to make transfers and withdraw their funds until April 20 of this year. This is explained in the email sent by Neteller:

Your account will remain active until April 20, 2021. From this date, your NETELLER account will be closed automatically. Until April 20, you will still be able to make transactions and withdraw funds from your account, but you will not be able to load more funds to your account.

Neteller, payment platform.

Skrill email reads exactly the same, and adds as Neteller a thank you for the trust placed, providing a customer service link for any questions.

Among the complaints and laments of Venezuelans on Twitter, the payment processor Airtm , sent a tweet hinting that he could be the substitute for platforms. Other users instead proposed Bitcoin, which may be a better option, since it is resistant to censorship and also there are no intermediaries. Many Venezuelans are migrating to this option, more than out of desire, out of necessity, as the journalist Juan Ibarra explains in this CriptoNoticias article.

The closure of payment platforms in currencies is not something new for Venezuela, since others such as TransferWise, Oracle and Paxful have stopped operating in the country for more than a year. The case of Paxful can be read in this article reviewed by CriptoNoticias.

Another country that is suffering at the same time as Venezuela the withdrawal of Skrill and Neteller is Zimbabwe, as you can see in this Tweet.

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