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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."
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.
Stopping money flow and financial services innovation is, like Internet censorship,
Its not about stopping money flow, but rather money flow in a regulated manner. I don't think its even legal for PayPal to have the services they offer without registering itself as a bank. As another someone said earlier, "The problem is PayPal wants to do the functions of a bank but does not want to be registered as a bank".
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.
And don't forget, India was mostly unaffected by our recent economic downturn because of their draconian economic laws. For decades they were criticized for their over regulation of their financial markets but after the fall, India was seen as a model for how markets could survive wide-scale economic collapse.
FYI, not in India. Western union cannot be used to send money from India. It can be used to send to India though, where the recipient can furnish necessary documentation (identity proof, name address, reason for transfer) and collect it.
Only an idiot would consider an economy with almost 7% growth in a global downturn to be a lumbering, stagnant market.
Apparently, neither do you.
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.