Is VirtaPay.com A Scam?

About a year ago I did a review on a Pay Pal wanna be site called PayBox.me which was a company dealing in paying you ‘virtual money' and building referrals so that ‘one day' they could be big enough to join the online payment business with real products and real money. You can read all about that here if you want and you should. Know why? Because VirtaPay is the same company renamed. It started up in January 2011 under the new name. They claim they disbanded the other company because it shared a similar name of an existing well established legitimate company. That was one of my biggest red flags which they seemed to address with the name switch.

Usually when a company revamps it's so that they can start fresh by addressing problems of the past and improving. That's what smart companies that change do. But then there are shady companies out there that change their name but are still up to no good and have made an art form out of this practice. It's stuff like that which basically birthed workathomenoscams.com into existence so we can warn you about it. In fact in my initial review I mentioned PayBox.me seemed to be a remake of a company called Green Zap. And here we are again discussing yet another revamping of the same company? Makes you go hmmmm, doesn't it? Well let's dive into this review instead of making assumptions.

What is Virta Pay about?

According the the website VirtaPay is in Pre-launch mode, which is exactly what made me uneasy about PayBox.me. I mean you've had 3 iteration of this company at this point. Haven't all the bugs been worked out? Don't you already have millions of users from these other companies that were dissolved that you can use for this company? Apparently not, because their story is the same. The pre-launch is to build their group to the millions or billions, while letting them use their Virtual Money back and forth between members to share stuff, and then when they have the numbers, delve into using their funds for real products. Rrrrrright….

Assuming you do actually want to join this, you are provided with $100 in your account. Then they ask you to log on each day and "do stuff" for them. If you do you get another $20. If you bring in a friend and strangers they give you another $25.

Sounds good, but don't get too excited! None of the money you get is real money. It's actually their virtual money which has no real value outside the VirtaPay world. That money can only be traded between members. Big whoop! Whereas companies like MySurvey , ICS or Swagbucks allow you to redeem their virtual cash or points for real dollars.

What's the difference between Virta Pay and PayBox.me?

VirtaPay adds some elements that weren't present in PayBox.me. For instance you can use your funny money to buy digital products other members create. You can also use your virta pay money to purchase ads on Virta Pay to promote your own referral links, affiliate products, your own products, etc. Assuming they actually have a lot of members and if they really see the promotions by other members, it might be a great way to make money with promotions.

The other thing they added is what they call an ad sharing thing. You place an ad on their site for any Clickbank product and 50% of the time you will earn your normal commissions. I know, I don't get it either, why place the ad and only get half the commission?

You know, rather than all my babble, they made a pdf file you can get here if you really want to read about how they say to use their system for ads and real affiliate income. There is also decent advice mixed in with the song and dance about how to make money on ads.

This is all cute and all but it still doesn't address many of the issues that concerned us with the PayBox.me version of this company such as the following.

Do we know any more about payments?

Nope we still have no way to know how they plan to get any real money to you or what the time frame is. We do know they let you earn money from Clickbank but that will only happen if people come to your page on this site. The Terms of Service are identical to the PayBox.Me site which I copied here for you.

All account balances are held in VirtaPay virtual currency. VirtaPay maintains a virtual currency that is autonomous and independent from all other world currencies. The VirtaPay currency is denominated in dollars and cents (similar to the currency of the United States and over 20 other countries). The VirtaPay currency is currently in a closed system, and cannot be exchanged or spent outside of this system. Our plans include person-to-person payments, integration with Facebook, the sale and delivery of digital goods, and many more features.

and my opinion about this payment statement has also stayed the same.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed so maybe I missed this in the above statement. But were you able to find anything in there about when we can expect to be able to freely exchange or cash out this funny money? The time frame of "before long" doesn't sit well with me. I know with ICS for instance when I reach $2 I can cash out my money. I know with Swagbucks when I reach a certain amount of Swagbucks I can redeem it for money from paypal. There is none of this ambiguity. So that doesn't sit well with me.

I realize this whole review may have sounded more like a con than a review, but what can I say, I have to call things as I see them to direct you the best way I can. But be that as it may, there are specific things I see as red flags, so let me get into them…

Cons

The are still in pre-launch after over 9 months as Virta Pay and about a year as PayBox.me. That is too long to have your members hold on before launching. And again what's the wait about? You've literally had 3 attempts at this.

No matter how you twist, turn and stretch the tale, you are dealing with fake money. Show me how to turn it into real dollars my bank will take and I will pay more attention to everything else they have to say.

I'm not a big numbers kind of guy. So take this with a grain of salt. But how can any company afford to give people $20 a day to just log on and do some ambiguous low skilled task. The math just doesn't seem to add up yet again.

And finally they've changed their name 3 times? Why would a legitimate company continue to do that and then basically repeat all the same mistakes of the past?

So Is VirtaPay.com legitimate?

Well technically since there is no money involved on your end, you have not been "scammed", unless your time is money. Most of us do view our time as valuable and we want to spend time bringing in legitimate income using multiple streams of income. With this thing my original opinions stand firm and that was to pass on it! This constant switch up names smells too much like a con artist scam. Furthermore from a business point of view the whole company model doesn't seem sustainable or scalable.

So if your time is as valuable as mine is, you might be better off spending some time checking out my legitmate non-traditional ways to make some extra cash. At least with that stuff you're dealing with real money and established companies. In any event, if you like what you've read, I encourage you to become one of my loyal subscribers and get our weekly email job recaps and work at home review articles. Don't forget to join the fun on my Facebook fanpage as well!

Well that's all for me. Feel free to chime in below with your own ‘two cents' about this opportunity, it's probably worth more than the money at VirtaPay. Oh snap, yes I did go there! lol