Safe, Trusted Payment Processor For Paying Freelancers?

Depends on what kind of safety you need. Another option is to use an escrow service, which protects both of you.

Google Checkout?

Moneybookers: world's worst customer service (in my experience).

AlertPay: nearly dead? http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5580761

Western Union: major nuisance to use, many won't want to (also terribly expensive in some countries).

Funny, as I am using western union now. My bank is now really pushing this service. It costs me $8 to send $500 and no problems.

Please do not get me started on pay pal - or I can cry. They are almost as bad as fee bay. There use to be a payment program by citi corpse. I think that one is gone.

amazon has a payment system that is fairly new. I have never used it, but you might look into it.

Also, for freelancing, you might want to consider working under a guru.com or odesk account. yes they take a good percentage, but it also provides you some additional protection as well as work opportunities.

most merchant accounts are going to take about 3% ish. plus you have to deal with chargebacks and lots of other business hassles. If you work under odesk, all that is done for you and there is a lot less risk to you getting beaten out of money by a client.

I am not saying it is for everyone, but 10% for odesk with fewer hassles vs 3% ish with other options plus additional risk and hassles is certainly something to think about.

oh and did i mention the tax implications are much easier to deal with if you were to work under an odesk or guru type of system.

It costs me $14 or $19 to send $700 with Western Union - depending on which outlet I use (Walmart or something else). This is sending from Canada to Eastern Europe.
($ = CAD)

EDIT. Amazon wouldn't work for the OP since he's in Canada: it's only for you, US guys

Escrow is a very safe method of payment for both the buyer and the seller, though I think most people use it for when large sums of money are being transferred.

I have been using Western Union and it works great. I am testing Google checkout now...results pending.

Google checkout is a good one i personally use. You should definitely check them out

Paypal sucks big time and so does WU. First time I used WU was to send a payment to NL from US back in the late 90's to pay for hosting. Back then getting hosting was not as easy as it is now. From my experience WU charges around 10-12% depending on the amount you send. I use WU once in a while but it is not my preferred method due to high cost. I also used 2checkout in the past to receive payments in the early days for a web store. I dont have any complaints about them.

Back to Paypal. I sometimes think that they dont care about either side of the transaction when it comes to IM transactions. You can be the buyer and the seller will rip you off and Paypal doesnt care, they will vote in the favor of the seller. Happened to me when the seller didnt deliver what was promised but delivered something. Paypal doesnt care, they got their commission and just move on. Same thing on the other side, as a seller you sell something and the buyer claims he never received it. Paypal will side with the buyer no matter how much credibility the seller has in terms of previous transactions and 100% delivery rate prior to this incident.

Unfortunately for us Paypal remains the only option for a lot of the payments for most of us. It has a lot of penetration into countries where it wasnt accepted just 5 years ago.

What would be non Paypal service that is accepted in US, Europe & Middle East and Asia thats not WU.

I heard authorize.net is a good alternate...

Let's recap.

PayPal: It's PayPal, they steal people's money.
Moneybookers: Worst support (when I login, it throws an error). I don't feal safe using them.
Western Union: Charge me $125 to use (so my employee tells me)
Google Checkout: Not accepted in most countries.

If not Paypal, I think it's western union..
but Paypal probably the best way..