Skrill Brand Guidelines: Moneybookers, a Slang Word for Money & a Paysafe Wallet

A London e-wallet that opened in 2002.

Skrill began as Moneybookers. German Wikipedia says the company was founded in London in 2001 and opened its service to customers in April 2002; English Wikipedia also gives 2001 and the United Kingdom. It was a stored-value wallet: customers loaded money first and then paid merchants or other people, and German Wikipedia says a recipient without an account was sent a message inviting them to open one to collect the funds.

Regulation came early. German Wikipedia says Moneybookers received its licence as an electronic money institution in February 2003. TechCrunch, writing in November 2010, described it as the first e-money issuer to obtain an electronic money licence from the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and said the company then claimed more than 15 million account holders and 70,000 merchants.

Ownership changed in March 2007, when the private-equity investor Investcorp took a majority stake in a buy-out, according to German Wikipedia; English Wikipedia also dates the purchase to that month. German Wikipedia adds that the company strengthened its management in 2007 with a focus on e-commerce, and that the wallet became established on smaller auction sites away from eBay and as an escrow payment system.

A slang word for money, chosen on purpose.

The rename was announced in November 2010. TechCrunch reported on 16 November 2010 that Moneybookers would rebrand as Skrill, with the new name taking over as the consumer-facing brand by the end of 2011, and that the parent was now called Skrill Holdings. English Wikipedia gives September 2011 for the announcement and 2013 for the completion of the rebrand, so the two sources differ on the dates.

The name was a deliberate choice. TechCrunch pointed out that “skrill,” short for “skrilla,” was already slang for money, and quoted the company’s co-chief executive hoping that people would one day “Skrill” money to friends and family in the way they “Google” something or “Skype” a friend. The publication added that the company linked the change to its rapid growth.

As Skrill, the company kept buying. German Wikipedia says Skrill bought payolution, an Austrian provider of invoice and instalment payments for online shops, in 2011, and that its takeover of the Austrian prepaid voucher paysafecard was announced in July 2012 and completed in February 2013. Skrill, paysafecard and payolution then formed the brands of the Skrill Group. In August 2013 Investcorp announced the sale of Skrill to CVC Capital Partners, both editions of Wikipedia say. The group also took over Ukash, a British rival of paysafecard, and merged it into the voucher business; German Wikipedia dates the purchase to November 2014, while English Wikipedia gives April 2015 for completion.

The brand also bought visibility through sport. English Wikipedia says Skrill sponsored the European Poker Tour in its eighth season in 2011, and that in July 2013 the English football league then known as the Conference took its name for a season, with divisions called the Skrill Premier, the Skrill North and the Skrill South. Later deals named in the same source include AC Milan in May 2020 and Leeds United in March 2021.

Design and documentation.

Payment processors and wallets present themselves in more than one place at once. A merchant meets them at the counter and in the checkout, a developer meets them in documentation, and an investor meets them on corporate pages about owners and listings. Each of those surfaces carries the brand in a different register.

At the counter, the brand is often a device. Global Payments, for example, described a modular countertop terminal for its Genius platform in November 2025, with a 15.6-inch merchant display, hidden cable management and stand, kiosk and wall-mount configurations, according to its release. Online, the brand shows up as a list of methods: PayU’s European corporate site sorts its offer into cards and digital wallets, online bank transfers, deferred payments and local schemes such as BLIK.

For developers, processors publish their own entry points. PayU’s Indian site links documentation and an API Playground, and its European site links a Developer Portal and a public status page. The Indian site also lists a mobile app SDK, a software kit for adding payments to apps, among its payment products.

Corporate pages tell the ownership story. PayU’s Indian site describes the business as part of Prosus, listed in Amsterdam and Johannesburg and majority owned by Naspers, while Global Payments’ investor site gives its New York Stock Exchange ticker, GPN, and its releases record deals such as the Worldpay purchase completed in January 2026. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, and what its own pages say about its products and markets.

One of two wallets under one owner.

English Wikipedia says the deal was announced in March 2015. In August 2015 the whole Skrill Group, paysafecard included, was acquired by the Optimal Payments Group, German Wikipedia says; Optimal already owned the rival wallet Neteller. In November 2015 the buyer renamed itself Paysafe Group, a name German Wikipedia traces to the voucher brand that Skrill had brought with it. Since then Skrill has been one of Paysafe’s digital wallets, alongside Neteller.

Under Paysafe the product widened. English Wikipedia says Skrill launched an international money-transfer service in February 2018, a service for buying and trading cryptocurrencies in July 2018, the Knect loyalty programme in November 2019 and money transfers for US users in June 2020. On its own site today Skrill presents itself as a digital wallet for money transfers and online payments, with sections for sending, spending, crypto, Knect points and funding forex trading accounts, and calls itself “a digital wallet used by millions.” German Wikipedia says accounts are offered in about 40 currencies and that a prepaid Mastercard can be linked to a Skrill account.

The way it pays has always been simple to describe. German Wikipedia says a payment is made by giving an amount and the email address that holds the Skrill account, so that a merchant selling digital goods with no delivery address receives no further personal details. For merchants, the same source says, Skrill provides an HTTPS interface and an API that need no special software, and verified customers can switch on a security token that asks for a one-time PIN at log-in.

The parent still leads with the name. Paysafe’s release of 30 March 2021, announcing its New York listing, lists Skrill and Neteller as its digital wallet brands, and its 2026 company description names Skrill as its example of a digital wallet, next to PaysafeCard for eCash.

For a design guide, Skrill shows how a slang word can carry a payments brand that began under a plainer, descriptive name. Compare the Paysafe brand guidelines for its owner and the PayPal brand guidelines for another online wallet. For this guide we use a deep plum, a soft lilac and warm paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Skrill’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.