PayPal To Suspend Business Operations In Turkey Following License Denial (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: PayPal has announced the suspension of its business operations in Turkey as of June 6, citing failure to obtain a new license for its service in the country. Turkey has made recent efforts to promote its own domestic tech sector, advancing censorship laws and other regulation to push large international companies out of the market. PayPal, as the latest victim on this trail, posted a statement on its local Turkish website today: "PayPal's priority has always been its customers. However, a local financial regulator has denied our Turkish payments license and we have had to regretfully comply with its instruction to discontinue our activities in Turkey." The denial of PayPal's license, by local financial regulator BDDK, comes following the introduction of new national rules in Turkey which require IT systems to be based within the country itself. PayPal runs its global business from a large portfolio of IT centers around the world. Turkey isn't the only country tightening its grip on the Internet. The Iranian government has given companies behind popular messaging apps one year to move their data onto servers in Iran.

Comments

More countries will follow

[JcMorin]

I predict in the future more countries will require company to host data in their own country. We already started to see those kind of policy from search engine, social media and now the banking sector. What kind of nightmare it will be have a global company?

Re:More countries will follow

[Penguinisto]

Technically, it's not too awful hard to do - it just involves a buttload of DB/disk replication.

That said, the problem I have with it isn't technical, but political: The reason Iran/Turkey/etc want that data local is because they want to comb through it in order to find dissidents to jail and/or torture (of course they'll use the term "spies", "counter-revolutionaries", "criminals", etc).

*That* is the problem here.

The technical side is surprisingly easy in this aspect, and gives the benefit of adding DR and local cache/speed capabilities.

Unfortunate but not unreasonable

[ADRA]

As much as I hate protectionism in general, it isn't unreasonable that a country wants the right to subpoena information about financial transactions (please no trolling, laize faire bitcoin nut jobs). The fact that the records are physically located in the country isn't surprising as it enforces that leverage on the companies doing business there.

Nobody blinks an eye when the EU demands patient records and other 'protected' confidential data being held solely in Europe, but being financial in nature, all of a sudden that's overreaching?

All I can say is if you're a multi-national without the ability to data partition geographically, whatever your business is in, you're just welcoming a pain in the ass now or in the near future.

I imagine this really comes down to cost. Turkey probably isn't a big enough market to justify the datacenter. This is news people!! ...

Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable

[StormReaver]

This is a direct response to NSA/GCHQ spying. The rest of the world, even those that oppose us, used to at least trust that their data were their own. This is the fallout of the U.S. and U.K. dipping their fingers into everyone's pies.

Good job, spooks. You made the world a worse place than it would have been without you.

Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a direct response to NSA/GCHQ spying. The rest of the world, even those that oppose us, used to at least trust that their data were their own. This is the fallout of the U.S. and U.K. dipping their fingers into everyone's pies.

Good job, spooks. You made the world a worse place than it would have been without you.

Yeah, YOU know what drives Turkey to demand things from large corporations.

YOU know what drive PayPay to decide not to to business in Turkey.

How the hell do you know it wasn't because the growing Islamic influence in Turkey wanted to make it hard for a "degenerate" Western/US company that supports gay rights?

How the hell do you know the decision wasn't driven by PayPal not wanting to do business under the terms imposed by a gang of barbaric homophobes stuck in the Dark Ages?

Re:Unfortunate but not unreasonable

[harrkev]

How the hell do you know the decision wasn't driven by PayPal not wanting to do business under the terms imposed by a gang of barbaric homophobes stuck in the Dark Ages?

Well, maybe because PayPal still has a Saudi Arabia office, where homosexuality can carry the death penalty.

Re:Short-sighted

[topologist]

The most routinely annoying example of Paypal sliminess is their refusal to allow a user to set the default payment source to a credit card.

If you have a linked bank account, it defaults to that, and you have to manually change it for every payment. This is clearly based on the hope that many users will neglect to do so, and so they can debit money with no cost to them from your bank account (while charging the recipient 3.5% or more), rather than paying the credit card transaction fees (some of which go back to the buyers, if they're smart and have cash back or rewards cards).

Followed by their invariable attempts to sell your their horrible credit cards, dire and false warnings about credit card charges unless you use a bank account, false warnings about foreign exchange conversion fees.

Not the most egregious issues I'm sure (I've never sold anything via ebay or paypal), but makes the whole experience unpleasant.