Moneybookers to rebrand as Skrill – hopes to become a verb

Moneybookers, the European PayPal alternative or “eWallet provider”, has announced that it is rebranding to Skrill.

The new name, which will take over as the consumer-facing brand by the end of 2011, is said to better capture the “ease and functionality of the company’s online payment suite”. Of course, the word skrill (short for skrilla) is already a commonly used slang word for money or “dough”, according to the infamous Urban Dictionary, which definitely makes more sense.

But there’s more.

Moneybookers Limited, which has been around for just under a decade, became the first e-money issuer to obtain an electronic money licence from the regulatory body the FSA and today claims over 15 million account holders and 70,000 merchants globally. While this year, Moneybookers was voted the UK’s fastest growing private-equity funded company by Deloitte and The Sunday Times. It’s apparently this “rapid growth” that has led Moneybookers to change its name.

Furthermore, Martin Ott, co-CEO of the new Skrill Holdings, appears to suggest that the company now wants to become a verb, something that Google and others have been determined to clamp down on for fear of risking their trademark.

“In the same way people ‘Google’ something or ‘Skype’ their friends, they can soon ‘Skrill’ their friends and family money and will use Skrill to pay whenever they shop online”, says Ott.