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Finally PayPal is available for Romania… but we are restricted to send-only
During the last days I have seen a lot of buzz regarding the addition of my country, Romania to the list of available countries on PayPal. Heck, I know that I needed something like this years ago when I started to work as a freelancer and I had problems retrieving the money I was working for. Every client was saying: let’s use paypal… and I had to explain to them that unfortunately this is not available for me and my country. Obviously during all this time I have found alternatives to paypal, as I could not wait for this fabulous event we are seeing now. Still, when I’ve seen the buzz generated by this news, I rushed immediately to check it out.
Here are my thoughts on this ‘fabulous’ news:
- most importantly the accounts we can create are restrictive… They are SEND-ONLY… Personally, I am not interested in sending money, but receiving money from outside. Even so this type of account can be useful to some peoples (maybe the ones that have not found moneybookers or other alternative solutions).
- why were we added on the first place? Some might think that because Romania has joined European Union in 2007 might have helped. Some might think that PayPal has realized the potential of our country… Neh… Wrong… On their press release we can see that they have added 87 new countries.
Without any offence, about some of them I have heard from the TV show Survivor (like Vanuatu, Palau or Cook Islands)… Just read the list and see for yourself what countries were added: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cook Islands, Djibouti, Dominica, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norfolk Island, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Yemen and Zambia.
- basically if Romania would have not been added at this time, when I assume PayPal has tried to add all the possible countries, it would have been more interesting… By the way, if there are any other countries left over, I wander why? Probably because they could not locate them yet on the map ;-).
Uff… This has been a great disappointment for me as I was expecting something else… Until we will be able to have full type of accounts, I will continue to use the alternatives I’ve found during the last years (mainly moneybookers).
Still I believe that even so, many of my conationals will be happy on this news and will rush to create their paypal accounts and use it to pay online for various services.
Update: this post is left intact for the reference, but as ClaudiuDesign noted in a comment bellow the accounts available for our country are no longer limited to send only.
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21st May 2007, 15:12
Lucky you! Paypal is still not available in Pakistan. I asked them that what is the reason of not being available in our country. But there response was not so satisfactory, all they talked in their reply was that they are trying to make PayPal available worldwide. But there were not able to tell me any good reason.
21st May 2007, 15:18
We have the same case in the Philippines. There was a huge petition paper and we can have recieve-only accounts.
Probably the main reason that we have that configuration is that our countries have high fraud rates. Hopefully, eBay realizes that they are missing a lot of potential customers.
25th May 2007, 11:07
You need to include more of those affiliate commission links to Moneybookers, just to make sure people sign up and you get paid.
I always trust content that is full of affiliate links. Clearly, those neutral authors are unbiased in their ethical recommendations.
25th May 2007, 12:58
Ok, ReaderX I have done all that I could to make you trust my content…
4th June 2007, 05:47
Similiar here… people in Indonesia can only use PayPal for sending. Even it helps for dealing with regional payment quicker — say payment to Singapore merchants, some people like to have opportunity to be paid via PayPal.
25th February 2008, 20:21
Hopefully paypal is now available for both send and receive money..hehe…