Mikey

Bankwires take upto 2-3 days to go through and be confirmed. Banks have cut-off times when you can send a wire and when money can be recieved, if you miss those times by a few minutes your transaction is for the next day. When dealing in different time zones this has an effect. If someone in Europe is paid via paypal from someone in the US they have access to that money within a few minutes of the transaction being completed. If someone in the US does a wire transfer to someone in Europe then you are looking at a couple of days. Banks in the US open at 8am, but generally send their transfers once a day, usually at the end of the day when the European banks are closed. Then since most European banks are archaic, they don't post the money until after the close of the banking day, so the person might not have access to it until the next business day.

So yes, bankwire is an alternative, albeit slower than paypal. I could give two fucks how my money gets to me, as long as it gets to me quickly.