Slashdot Mirror
India Suspended From PayPal For "At Least a Few Months"
More details have come about about what was behind PayPal's decision to suspend personal payments to any user in India, as we discussed on Sunday. In a blog post today, PayPal revealed that payments to India will remain in suspension for at least a few months. Customers in India will be able to pull rupees out of the service into their bank accounts within a few days. The suspension came about when Indian government regulators raised questions about whether PayPal's service was enabling remittances (transfers of money by foreign workers) to Indian citizens. "The problems may have been triggered by a marketing push that promotes PayPal as a way to send money abroad, a source familiar with the matter said. The campaign — which reads 'As low as $1.50 to send $300 to countries like India' — may have caught the attention of Indian regulators, the source said."
Stopping money flow and financial services innovation is, like Internet censorship,
a symptom of the fundamental conflict between the traditional role the state has expanded
to cover (ie governments) and the transparent, open and global nature of the Internet.
When everyone on the planet can communicate directly and immediately, through
fully automated translators, to any other connected person or to large groups
- why exactly do we need massive percentages (10-50%) of our resources funneled
to maintain the state and state-run defense and services? To preserve the old lines
on maps and control the access to major geographic regions? In almost every single
case, Internet connected people and services will do a better job.
The necessary reasons for countries as they exist today mostly go away when the
Internet fully connects individuals.* Obsolescence is a terrible thing for
bureaucracy, but can be framed as the primary driver of most "issues" governments
have with the Internet.
* physical defense and security being the only notable exception.
I hope they get in the crap with even more countries and are forced to do stuff like this, maybe eventually they'll have to declare themselves as an actual bank and give their users rights over their money for a change. There is so much dubious crap buried in the terms and conditions that none save a seasoned lawyer would figure out, and so many stories of people being royally screwed over by paypal (eg bank accounts being wiped out for no apparent reason)...
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
Isn't this in direct contradiction to something PayPal said a day or two ago? Something akin to "golly gee we're not sure what happened but we're looking into it".
On another note, this applies to private transactions only, not commercial ones. This directly affects any freelancers who aren't operating as a company though, such as Rent-A-Coder, et. al.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I have no idea persay, but I would be shocked if it wasn't directly caused by their fear that they wouldn't be able to effectively tax such income.
The aim is not to stop remittances, but to permit remittances only if the required paper work has been submitted (Which is very simple one page form, asking for sender and receiver details (name, address, identity proof) and reason for transfer).
The RBI (Reserve Bank of India) mandates banks registered in India to collect these before forex transfers can be made.
In this case, paypal doesnt want to be registered as a bank and fall under RBI regulations. As a result have been banned. I am surprise it did not happen earlier.
And just to make it clear, SWIFT Transfer (also called wire transfer) and mailing checks/DDs will continue to work. There are no options send/receive money order to/from India
1. The want to know about it so they can tax it.
2. They don't want foreign funding of domestic terrorists.
3. They don't want criminals to have yet another way to move money around.
4. They want to protect their export industry by not having that "favorable" effect on exchange rates.
What negative portrayal of India is there here?
Seriously, there's nothing negative at all in any of those links (well I'm sure there is in the comments on the link to another slashdot article, but that article itself isn't) or in the summary.
The rest of us read more than the first two words.
They are not trying to stop you from giving money to someone else, but from giving money to someone else [b]without leaving a trace[/b] that can be taxed or to be investigated for illegal money laundering.
SWIFT doesn't actually perform fund transfers. SWIFT just provides a standard platform for sending messages between banks. It's the Indian banks (and other ForEx providers) who have to report transactions to the government, anyway.
I visited New Delhi last November (2009).
On my way in, I managed to change my USD to INR at the airport right after the immigration counter, no problem with that.
But on my way out, I thought I can get my INR change back to USD at the air port (this is my normal routine). Alas! there are no money-changers at the airport. Even if they are available, they are only for Indians and it is capped at INR 5000.
I ended up bringing some 5-digit amount INR back to home, later changed back to USD and lost something like ~20 USD as I don't get same rates outside India.
This is ridiculous. I mean, I have been to many airports. And in most of them, there is a money changer and there are no restrictions for foreigners. But this is the first time I'm seeing other way around. Strange land indeed!
Not when the "FOREIGN CAPITAL" exchange service skirts the rules of responsible financial governance... or funds terrorism.
Paypal is not the only option and they should learn to play by the rules the makes sense.
While I am sure it did not damage India's economy the linked article did state that some (a significant enough "some" to be worth mentioning, apparently) of them do use it to get payed for their job.
"Some" of India's 1 billion plus population might be a non-trivial number but the amounts involved are not significant in a $1 trillion plus GDP economy. Sure, some people got burned using a method that's been called into question by the regulator; it's no biggie from India's overall point of view. From Paypal's point of view though, it's significant because of the potential of the Indian market, and that's why I think it's been given such coverage - it is an American publication focused on the technology space, which means Paypal is significant to it. It's a question of perspective.
So this action by PayPal I am sure has inconvenienced many people and for any everyone that uses it as a source of income could find the next months financially challenging.
It isn't an action by Paypal, it's an action by the Indian regulator, and it's not a source of income, it's a method of payment - payment that can be achieved through other means.
So while they might not have a right to operate, I would hope any country would think twice before doing anything that would jeopardize any of its citizens legal sources of income.
The issue is that their their method of payment is under investigation. Whether it's because the payment method allows them to dodge taxes, avoid necessary official declaration or simply that it can aid money laundering, it's something that a regulator is obliged to do. If the word "terrorist" was thrown in there, for example "paypal shuttered because it potentially allows terrorists to transfer funds", would that be sufficient justification?
Note: I was not overly careful with my grammar so maybe you can find another mistake to poke fun of, if you find my logic/opinion to hard to counter.
It wasn't an issue of grammar, it was the wrong word entirely. My issue was with ignorance and the transmutation of "'ve" to "of" due to idiocy, and I called you on it to make an effort to stop it spreading. If you don't want to make an effort to proof your writing, that's your choice, but don't get defensive when you get called on it.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
"I'll use PayPal once it is regulated, meself."
So you tie your paypal account to a credit card, and every time you log in they say "Give us all your bank account information, that will be really convenient!".
And you wonder, who are they trying to kid? Paypal answers to no one, and it appears they want access to your bank account not because it's convenient, but because when they deal with a credit card company, *there are federal laws that give you protections that PayPal would rather you not have*.
Like: Right to dispute a charge, and PayPal has to answer within a short time or they lose
Processes that must be followed, or else PayPal loses
And I'm supposed to give that up because... it's convenient? I'll bet a lot of people have linked their bank account to these guys, too. I think that's a foolish mistake. Once they have money from your bank, you're basically screwed. You're at the whim of a low-level clerk at PayPal. Thanks, but no thanks.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Well your problems are genuine ndverdo, but imagine some guy XYZ who is using the same route to fund a jehadi outfit for their services in India. Also: i) There is no traceability of the transactions ii) You cannot tax anyone earning any amount in India as PayPal is not a bank. We also don't exactly know the background story. It might be 100% feasible that Indian regulatory authorities might have requested logs of all such transactions and PayPal declined. This happened in Blackberry's case, where Blackberry declined Indian government to track its call data but it allows US government the same. Eventually Blackberry was blocked in India.