Dean
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I think everyone can agree that MoneyBadger.io has an awesome name, playing off the digital cash’s reputation as the honey badger of money. But is the service itself any good? I gave it a test to find out.

Why would you want to use it?

The fact is that Bitcoin addresses can be difficult to share and are impossible to remember. Most of the time this isn’t really a problem. If you are sat at your computer and want to request money to your desktop wallet you just copy and paste the address to share it. If you are out and about you can always generate a QR code to request payment to your mobile wallet.

But sometimes it would be nice to be able to simply share your payment details by talking to somebody. Perhaps you would prefer to get money to a desktop wallet fully controlled by yourself, but still need to share payment details when you are out and about, for example.

When dealing with people who may or may not want to use bitcoin for a payment it may also be nice to be able to just send an email address to receive payment via paypal or bitcoin (with a link to MoneyBadger so they know how) and let them choose how they want to pay.

I can also see the service being handy for giving gifts or sending money to friends without having to ask for their address each time. Using the same bitcoin address over and over again is not best practice, and in any case people may change wallets and therefore be unable to access addresses they have previously used. Sending payments through a service like this makes it easy to send to friends or to business associates who you make regular payments to, while allowing them to receive the payment to whatever address they choose.

How it Works

The process for sending and receiving is pretty simple, and does not require either party to register an account with or provide any additional personal details to the site.

To Send

You can initiate a payment from the main home screen of the site by entering the email address or phone number you want to send to and clicking continue. On the next screen you type the amount you want to send; you can specify the amount in EUR, USD, GBP or in BTC itself.

You are then given the option to add a personal message to send along with the payment, and a return address that the service will send your coins back to after one week in the event that the recipient doesn’t collect them.

When you hit submit, you are then provided with an invoice including the address you need to make your payment to.

Once your payment has been confirmed by the Bitcoin network, the recipient will be sent a message letting them know that they’ve been sent a payment.

To Collect

The collect coins sent to you via MoneyBadger all you need to do is click ‘withdraw’ from within the message they send you:

You then enter the payment code from your message, enter the email address or phone number the coins were sent to, and provide a bitcoin address where you would like them to be sent:

Costs

There is a flat fee of $0.30 for using this service. You need to be aware that this fee is taken off the amount you request to send. So if you say you want to send $10 then you will pay an invoice for exactly $10, and $9.70 will be received at the other end.

My Conclusion

Its a fairly basic no-frills service, but it works well and doesn’t cost too much. The cool name makes it easy to remember, and I can see it being useful occasionally.