Paypal India Will Block Electronic Withdrawals From July 29

[The Simpleton 2]

Paypal India is once again going to enforce a block on its users,starting July 29. Unlike last time, however, it has sent an email to the users warning them about this. Anyway, this time they're not blocking all the features but they're removing the electronic withdrawal system; which means the only way to withdraw money would be to request a cheque, which could take forever to arrive The only saving grace is that they won't charge you $5 for the cheque as before. Like last time, they haven't mentioned the date when things would return to normalcy, but that's Paypal for you!

In accordance with regulatory instructions, we would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010. At present you can request for either an electronic or cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account if you are an India user.
From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.

While we are working hard to restore the electronic withdrawal service, in the meantime, we are bringing this matter to your attention so that you can plan your future withdrawal activities accordingly.
To request for a cheque withdrawal:

1. Log into your PayPal account, click on 'Withdraw'.
2. Click on the 'Request a cheque from PayPal' link.
3. Enter the withdrawal amount and select your mailing address, then click 'Continue'.
4. Click 'Submit' to confirm your request.

In order to help you with this change and until further notice, we will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee to you for cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.

For any questions, please log into your PayPal account and click 'Contact Us' at the bottom of the page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused from this change in our withdrawal functionality. We will provide ongoing updates to you here. We thank you for your attention and patience as we work tirelessly to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.


Thank you,

The PayPal Asia Team

Edited July 28, 2010 by The Simpleton (see edit history)

[mahesh2k 0]

Just checking the news. I think they're removing the wire transfer method. With that method it was possible for sellers and users to transfer money to bank using SWIFT code. But as RBI is having issues with paypal because of illegal money transfers they're stopping this now. With check it's possible to catch every transaction coming and going outside. Not much of damage but looking at the condition of paypal, i must say all indian users should switch to moneybookers or alertpay. If possible convince google for opening indian section of google checkout.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I don't see any issues with this since they are waiving the fee. If they were still charging it I'd see it as a problem though.As for how long it takes to receive the check -- it shouldn't be more than a week, which is about how long an ACH transfer can take anyways.

[magnafrost 0]

Though I dont really have personal experience with paypal cheques , I'd say this is bad news. I have heard a BUNCH of complaints from people that the cheques they requested never made it home. And the exceptional customer service of Paypal was amazingly unhelpful. I don't care if my money takes me 2 months to reach, as long as it DOES reach! And I wonder what the minimum amount for requesting a cheque will be now. I wouldn't want to risk getting a huge cheque and losing it, but I'm sure Paypal wouldn't like people requesting a thousand 5$ cheques for each 5k $

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I think the minimum for checks is like $50. They may waive the minimums for the people in India though since they have no other way to get their money -- it wouldn't be fair to say "well, you have $49.98, so I'm sorry but you can't take your money."

[mahesh2k 0]

The only issue paypal users will have now is more and more people who are trying to sell their services or product from india will move. They've option to move to e-junkie or similar services. There will be waste of time if people keep on using paypal and get enforced with such restriction. Be it RBI or Paypal issue, with this announcement paypal took their service back to 2003-05. I really feel like moving back in time with this news. What's going on between RBI and paypal. I'm sure this will hurt freelance and other online markets and surely affect online purchases of indians using paypal. Looks like alertpay does have future. Maybe someone planted inception in paypal company.

[Harlot 2]

I don't live in India, but I think that its sad that third world countries don't have the same access as Western Nations to online translations. There are claims that a lot of the discrimination is based on scamming within some Eastern Nations. I can see maybe Nigeria (lol jk). I must say though that a check is better than nothing, since many countries are not supported at all.

[magnafrost 0]

It looks like the electronic withdrawals are back! I got a mail from paypal saying I can withdraw funds electronically as well as request a cheque. And that the 0$ cheque still stands in place. Good news I'd say

[mahesh2k 0]

Cool news. I'll see if i can withdraw my money from paypal to bank. Thanks for the news. Though i didn't received any message or email in any case. Weird though, i didn't get email for first issue explained in this thread nor the update where electronic transactions were back.

[fermin25 3]

Simple Paypal is the most strange company that I have ever seen. In my country Honduras I can sell products with my paypal account but I can buy with my paypal account. When I made the question to them Why you are not allowing sell to honduran users? They only said me that "is a company?s politic." I think that paypal is not a good option to withdraw and I don?t know if this will be a strong impact in the Xisto and Xisto - Web Hosting because they use paypal to withdraw so I recommend to the admins of Xisto - Web Hosting to seek for another ways to pay like Alertpay, which is a canadian company and 2checkout.This is paypal and we are obligated to accept it. I was angry with the support team when they only said me that Honduras has no economy guarantees and they only operate with big economies or economies in way to grow. This is ridiculous because in a small country like Honduras there are not problems to sell your products in anothere companies like 2checkout and Alertpay. The truth is that we are being damaged by this stupid politics and we have to do something and I recommend to all the indian companies that securely will lose a lot of money with this paypal?s decision to look for another companies to make the electronic withdraws like Alertpay which have a lot of run in this business and it is supported by the canadian government so you maybe have to move your withdraws to alertpay and avoid future problems with paypal. Moneybookers is another option but the problem is that almost all the operation is with poker and gambling sites what maybe will not look so good for your clients. So please consider this and dont allow to paypal do what they want to do. Bye.

[sheepdog 10]

That really sucks! If I had to wait for Pay Pal to mail me a check, I wouldn't even bother using it, I'd just have the customer mail it directly to me and screw Pay Pal and their three percent commission! Where I live it would take at least a week to get a check, if not longer, and since customers are always so slow to pay for their pups, I wouldn't have the money in time to pay for the shipping.

[The Simpleton 2]

Oops, due to my absence I couldn't report back here that the issue I talked about is resolved, i.e., the decision to remove the electronic withdrawal system has been canceled, and everything is going on as usual. Paypal did give quite a scare to the users for a few days with their email, but before they could enforce this, they decided it was better not to risk losing any more customers. It does seem they're steadily going down in India, and if they're not, it's only because there hasn't been a good alternative yet. Once people find an alternative which they like, Paypal will be in big trouble then. For now I just hope that nothing bad happens!