Is Paypal open to all South-Africans?

It was quite an exciting time when FNB (First National Bank) brought back PayPal's services to South-Africa – finally, again and at last, Paypal changed (added)  the much awaited services to the Paypal South-Africa site.

To people who have been used to the benefits of PayPal since forever, obviously didn't realize how to appreciate this tremendous opportunity. In fact. We South-Africans appreciated it so much, we had been quite afraid of something that might become (you never know!) a threat to keep PayPal in South-Africa. I mean: PayPal is accepted as payment method on virtually all websites in the world. That's over 90% to be exact. Or perhaps I should correct myself even better.




This fact creates the impression that PayPal is the only trusted way to accept internet payments and to inter-transfer money between individuals and businesses – and this specifically brings me to the actual point.

Out of the 190 countries which may buy online using PayPal, only 43 could have received money into their PayPal accounts. Not all 190 countries. Only South-Africa (Africa's largest economy) became the 44^th country allowed to fully make use of PayPal's entire service: making payments and being allowed to sell, use PayPal's integrated merchant services – and off course receiving, withdrawing and depositing money to and from a local bank account. All while the other nearly 150 other countries are still in the growing PayPal network that may only make payments, cannot sell, receive, deposit money from a local bank account – neither to withdraw it to there.

To South-African internet entrepreneurs, this was a blessing bestowed upon us all as we felt this deal between FNB and PayPal have finally linked us with the world and the world with us. We no longer needed to stress about how to exactly make use of third parties (and perhaps 4^th parties) so that we can earn some money online . . .

But now the question remains: Is Paypal everything we hoped for? Is our Paypal prayers truly answered? Can we fully say that we can start to make money with Amazon, EBay, with Lulu and tradebit and Payloadz, sell affiliate products, writing for money, etc? There are literally thousands of ways that one can find a resource from PayPal's over 100 million active users to send some green love and to utilize PayPal's 190 markets – but can ALL South-Aficans really benefit from this?

The simple answer is no. Even though FNB brought Paypal back to our country, it would seem that Paypal insist that South-Africans only link “Cheque”or Credit Card Accounts to their Paypal account and not “just savings” accounts.

This suggests that not nearly as much South-Africans will be able to deposit money to and withdraw money from their Paypal accounts even if they would  have money in it!

To crown this, Fnb doesn't even state this on their website – but only make their customers believe that they can link ANY account to a South-African Paypal account.

What a sad, sad story: Paypal is still not available and open to poor South-Africans. What a shame.