cashU, Ukash Okpay, question

[candtalan]

On mtgox page
https://mtgox.com/trade/funding-options

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To Add funds to my mtgox account,
Funding Options,
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re funding options, it says

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Deposit via OKPAY
You will need a OKPAY or CashU account to deposit via
 this method.
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I notice the mention of -both- okpay and cashU, but I do not understand why both are mentioned here.
When I look at cashU link   
https://www.cashu.com/
and then, to find 'where'
https://www.cashu.com/site/en/fundcashU
I see that 'Ukash' is in the list and it includes Europe:

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Ukash Vouchers
Region: Europe....
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As it happens,
the 'where' link
http://www.ukash.com/en-GB/where-to-get/
shows that Ukash is available local to me (in UK), so it becomes a possible, available method for me.


However I have never come across this stuff before....
1) is Ukash functionally equivalent to cashU?
2) if I have a Ukash voucher, can I use it directly into my mtgox account, or must I first put it into my okpay account, and then fund mtgox from okpay?
3) With a Ukash voucher or a cashU voucher, what exactly do I do? I guess it has a number on it, or a scratch number whatever? What is this number called  'U' money reference?  what please?

tia

[matthewh3]

I didn't know about this method but I would assume you would use Ukash credit to fund your cashU account then credit MtGox.  It's a really dire situation for people to buy small amounts of bitcoin cheaply in the UK.  GBP/BTC exchange volume used to be the second biggest market when there was Intersango and MtGox Barclay's deposits.   

[mintz]

I didn't know about this method but I would assume you would use Ukash credit to fund your cashU account then credit MtGox.  It's a really dire situation for people to buy small amounts of bitcoin cheaply in the UK.  GBP/BTC exchange volume used to be the second biggest market when there was Intersango and MtGox Barclay's deposits.   

I received a £100 Ukash voucher last week. I converted it to USD and then tried to deposit in cashu. The transaction failed and the voucher was marked invalid. I had to contact Ukash by email. They told me that cashu had stopped accepting ukash. I had to get them to deconvert the voucher back to GBP and I sold the voucher to someone directly for BTC. It took 2 days for Ukash to sort out the mess.

[moni3z]

It's cheaper to just wire money to your Okpay account from Marco Polo UK transfer , or use contact-sys, than using Ukash/Cashu, which are like 8% in fees. CashU is a voucher system in the Middle East/Africa and Ukash is a voucher system everywhere else. You can use both to fund each other (Spend CashU, load Ukash account).

https://www.okpay.com/en/services/fees-e-currency.html

Also I got an email this morning that Okpay now uses 6 other money transfer methods including Unistream. Just because they're eastern european outfits doesn't mean there isn't local offices wherever you live. I just checked and there's a contact-sys office a block away from my apartment and costs 1.5% to load my OKpay account up to $7500