What is PayPal?
PayPal is the most popular money transferring service used online. Although it is a service provided by a private company, it is considered the de facto standard of online money transfers. PayPal is very useful for internet users to pay online for the goods and services they purchase through internet, and get paid for goods and service they sell online. Although it is necessary to sign up for a PayPal account in order to receive money through PayPal, one doesn’t need a PayPal account to make payments to someone’s’ PayPal accounts. You can use your credit or debit card to make payments to anyone’s PayPal account. This makes PayPal the premier money transfer service.
Problem
Sri Lankans can send money to any PayPal user, but Sri Lankans can’t receive money from anyone through PayPal. So clients deny offers from Sri Lankan freelancers who require them to use complex money transfer methods and hire people from countries that support PayPal. There are many individuals and small businesses that provide online services like web design and development, graphic designing and more in Sri Lanka. But Sri Lanka not supporting PayPal has become a barrier for them to continue and progress in their career, who try to bring money into Sri Lanka. One method that they currently use is making PayPal accounts using fake addresses in other countries. But this can cause them to lose their hard earned money.
Cause
The cause for the above problem is that PayPal doesn’t allow receiving money for accounts created with Sri Lankan addresses. This is the reason PayPal gives for that: “Why does my PayPal account have only send capabilities? Members in some countries and regions may only use PayPal to send payments and not receive payments due to the complexities of global finance. We are constantly working to improve services for you and hope to expand our features for you in the future. You can view the countries with send only capabilities under the Send Money to Anyone in the Growing PayPal Network on the PayPal Worldwide (
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries-outside) page.“ -
https://www.paypal.com/helpcenter/main.jsp;jsessionid=g2N6PMrCFxyfQQbJZ6j21v12yTw5xqPd1Mb1dxNG11nhGHjHY1y7!2075623774?locale=en_US&_dyncharset=UTF-8&countrycode=LK&cmd=_help&serverInstance=9002&t=solutionTab&ft=browseTab&ps=solutionPanels&solutionId=11811&isSrch=Yes Central Bank of Sri Lanka is denying PayPal to extend their service to Sri Lanka because CBSL is isn’t ready to update their rules to match the world’s and citizens’ needs.
Solution
Sri Lankans can benefit massively if
Government of Sri Lanka can get PayPal to support Sri Lanka and CBSL’s policies should be updated to match 21st Century.
- Selling goods made in Sri Lanka in online market places like eBay and bringing money into the country.
- Small and medium sized graphic designers, web developers etc can provide their service world wide and bring their money into the country.
- Sri Lankans can compete with others from PayPal supported countries for selling goods and services.
- Increasing the income to the country through Information and Communication Technology.
Execution
PayPal Pte. Ltd is a company owned byeBay Inc.situated in United States of America. The Government of Sri Lanka should work with them in order to get them support Sri Lanka and make CBSL to support PayPal. These are the services Sri Lankans should get from PayPal:
- Any amount of money should be transferable to any Sri Lankan’s PayPal account from any country.
- Money in PayPal account of any Sri Lankan should be transferable to Sri Lankan bank accounts.
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