8 replies to this topic

[OpaQue]

PayPal isn't working properly in India. eBay’s electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users. It is reversing personal transactions; transactions involving businesses are still allowed.

As I am from India, PayPal rejected 2 of my payments saying :-

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Hello XXXX,

Your payment of xx has been sent back to the sender of the payment.

We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, ( select “Goods,” and © provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.

We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you,
PayPal

On asking for more information, all they said was :-

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Dear ,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

I understand that you want to know why the payment you received for $ USD from is reversed. This payment was sent as Personal. We have stopped allowing Personal Payments to be sent to and from India. We are aware of this issue and I sincerely regret the inconvenience it has caused you. We are trying to resolve this as soon as possible. Below are the details:

Personal Payment – Send Money for India Accounts

· India customers are no longer able to see the option to send a Personal payment on the Send Money page · They can continue to use other payment options, such as eBay checkout.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, ( select ‘Goods’, and © provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment, such as a gift to a friend or family member, then we request that you find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.

Although India customers are unable to send Personal payments, they are still receiving Personal payments from Non India customers.

· In order to stop ALL Personal payments TO and FROM India accounts, we have started reversing Personal payments sent by Non India customers starting today. (the only exception will be in cases where the buyer has included a shipping address – we don’t want to delay any shipment of goods) · Emails will be sent to both sender and recipient to let them know why the money was returned and what options they have to proceed forward. (see attached for examples)

· We are also in the process of implementing a change on the website to automatically stop the payment from processing, rather than waiting to reverse the payment. We will send you additional updates as soon as we have more details.

The Personal payment option on the International Send Money page has been updated and India has been removed from the ‘select a country’ drop down list.

· If the payment was for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then the buyer may resend the payment to the seller by following these steps on the PayPal website: (a) click the Send Money tab, ( select ‘Goods’, and © provide a shipping address.

I’ll be glad to hear from you if you need clarification, please email us again and we will try our best to give you immediate answers. Thank you for choosing PayPal for your online payment needs. We appreciate your business.

There is also an EVIL thought by solidblogger.com

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And one more (evil) observation, Paypal might loose several thousand dollars because of this sudden action. Let me tell you how : Paypal is sending back all the money to the sender, no matter if you have already withdrawn the money to your bank account/credit card or it’s still there in your Paypal account. Now if you have already withdrawn the money and have no balance left in your account, all reverse transactions will reflect as negative balance in your Paypal account. If you are a blogger and got the money from ad networks/affiliates such as Chitika, Infolinks, Kontera, ReviewMe, PayPerPost, TextLinkAds etc, you can login to your accounts and change the Paypal address. Now when those companies will reissue the payment, you will get them on your new Paypal address. That’s it. You have already withdrawn the amount to the bank account
and now you again get that money in a new account. Now you can again withdraw money to your bank account (may be a new one) from your new Paypal account and you get twice of the amount you own.

What do you think? How Paypal is going to handle this issue? Will Paypal ask the ad networks/senders to reissue the payment to the same old account, to prevent itself from getting scammed?

[BuffaloHelp]

PayPal has been really fussy about how they should "keep up with the current market."

I wonder if this sudden change (probably restore back to normal) is dues to heavy burden in US economy status. Possibly unrelated but just recently, my business account started to charge maintenance fees which I have never seen in over 5 years. And these weren't small fees--for certain business checking accounts, a fee can be as high as $150 (which was mine).

Sure, they agree to reverse the charges (over 6 months) but in the mean time they have $900 of my money they need to refund.

The reason I am saying this is because with that $900 of "my money" they can earn some interest by holding it for few days (in electronic banking, holding money by mass amounts equals high percentage--that's why when you deposit sometimes it takes over a week to clear).

Well, by blocking personal transfers PayPal can save "fees" or rather they can charge some "fees" by forcing accidental added on fees. Although fees will be refunded, the mass amounts collected by mass accounts could equal to some revenue.

In the world of troubled economy I wonder PayPal has figured out how to stay a float by doing some money managements... I wonder...

[H.O.D]

Oh this is some bad news for me as I'm expecting some payment from the US soon. Why would they take such a sudden decision anyway? I read somewhere that a large number of fraud cases are surfacing from India which is the reason why paypal took this harsh decision The worst part is that they've not mentioned how long they plan to do this and when they will relieve their harassed customers

[H.O.D]

The update from the paypal blog says that they are still 'fixing' the issue and the only good part is that they will be allowing withdrawals to bank accounts 'in a few days'. For lifting the block on sending payments, though, it will take months! So it's a mixed news for most people, but at least the bank withdrawal facility is good to have back, and if I'm not wrong only personal payments are blocked, and I received a payment of over $100 without any problem from the US. So let's just hope it all gets settled in a few more days, and not months/years!

[mahesh2k]

Well not only that many indian paypal accounts are now limited for sending and reciving money in this period. My question is how they'll pay any bills now ? i think many people are in trouble because of this. When inquired to paypal they said that it will take some months to work on this issue. But for on what point, mistake on their part ? What's the point in limiting customers for issue in their system ?

Really a bad news from paypal in 2010. They're axing asian users for payment issues so chances are there that asian users will figure out alternative way of payment processing. I'm sure that many people will move to another payment processor, like google checkout or alertpay.

[H.O.D]

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Well not only that many indian paypal accounts are now limited for sending and reciving money in this period. My question is how they'll pay any bills now ? i think many people are in trouble because of this. When inquired to paypal they said that it will take some months to work on this issue. But for on what point, mistake on their part ? What's the point in limiting customers for issue in their system ?

Really a bad news from paypal in 2010. They're axing asian users for payment issues so chances are there that asian users will figure out alternative way of payment processing. I'm sure that many people will move to another payment processor, like google checkout or alertpay.

yes paypal has really made a lot of people angry with this sudden decision of theirs. It's really annoying that they're not providing a good reason for it, and the worst part is that it looks like they're challenging their customers, "Without us, where will you dare to go?" And in reality, they do have a good point. Most sites and companies accept only paypal and not any other payment processor because they have to create an account and get it verified, etc just for the sake of a few people. When I asked my friend/employer if he would create an alertpay account to send me the money, he blankly said NO, because no one else asks him for alertpay, and he didn't want to go through the whole process of creating an account just for me. So like it or not, we're stuck with paypal For people like me, once the bank transfers are allowed again in a few days, things will become normal. But for the people who have to send payments are in a tight position, as they have to wait for some months before they're able to get their accounts working normally again. Well let's just see where this game goes now. This is really a bad move from Paypal's side. A rebellion could see it lose thousands of loyal customers.

[mahesh2k]

There is actually one good reason paypal have for doing that: Many companies and users have used gift and personal payment option in paypal to avoid fees. That way paypal missed lot of revenue. So they banned those features for india as indians found way to save their money from fees or tax.

But my question is if they found this feature, didn't they thought about it before making it ? What's the point in it to blocking in 2010 ? Were they sleeping for last 5-6 years ?

Another valid reason paypal for blocking is it's issue with indian banks, rule in 2008 RBI passed for such payments made conflict with paypal earnings so they wake up in 2010 feb 1st to stop indians to show that they heard about that rule in 2008 now. I like this "my ignorance but your punishment" style of paypal. I have managed to convenience my clients on freelance site to use alertpay. So expect some similar fall from other people as well. There will be sure some member fall off in near future.

As asian's are using Liberty reserve and alertpay already so i don't expect much loss for them, it's just that things like kontera and similar sites which used to get money from paypal. they have to think about indian publishers now. and such ad networks rarely think about publisher end they only think about their business. so there is economic loss for some time in india, but i'm sure we'll find something out for this. And once we do, i'm sure we'll change course of this paypal for sure.

[nirmaldaniel]

Okay, some one put it in a nut shell please, Using paypal is it advisable or not in India ? I am planning to get a credit card and link it with pay pal and use it . Now reading all these stuffs i doubt that i may end up in some confusion ? Can i go for it or not ? On the other hand i really dont understand why pay pal does so. As far as my knowedge is concerned there are some pay pal offices too in India, I mean Development Center. Still why pay pal does so ?

[mahesh2k]

It is advisable. If you can find shops and clients with google checkout then i'll say go for it. But you'll find them rare. But hey, they have debit or credit card so they'll not have hard time with google checkout. Also rate of GC are much better than Paypal.

If you want to do business online then you need to have not only paypal but also alertpay, liberty reserve and perfect money. Who knows how your client wants to pay you. In case you get confused you can withdraw from alertpay, liberty reserve to your bank or western union. So you should have multiple payment processor while earning online. Don't just rely on paypal for payments. Oh and to answer your question for paypal, go for it. For now they'll deal with legal issues and we'll service back in april/may for sure.