Few weeks ago I received an invitation to sign a petition on Change.org created by a Lagos-based creative design company CreativeKills, petitioning Paypal to extend its services to Nigeria.
This petition has long collected over 500 signatures and just today a report on Reuters has confirmed that Paypal has decided to expand their payment services to 10 new countries including Nigeria and 3 other African countries.
The 10 new countries are Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco and Montenegro, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Paraguay.
This is good news to any blogger or internet entrepreneurs out there as we have always missed out on opportunities that require Paypal as a means of payment on the internet.
I can’t recall how many times I missed out on advertising opportunities just because the advertiser can only make payments with Paypal.
There is no perfect timing for Paypal to come to Nigeria than now, just few weeks before the CBN cashless policy is implemented nationwide.
Paypal Nigeria will be dream come true for many of us who are looking to integrate this service into our business and websites.
Now it will be possible to make payments easily online and to also receive payments from any part of the world online. This will definitely bring new opportunities to Nigeria and bloggers like me.
We don’t have to sign up and verify Paypal through Payoneer anymore when the Paypal Nigeria services will finally kick off.
According to Rupert Keeley, the executive in charge of the EMEA region of PayPal, as from Tuesday 17th of June, 2014 Nigerians and other 9 listed countries sign up and use the online payment platform. That means that PayPal will now be used in 203 countries worldwide.
Update: An official statement has been made by Paypal to extend their services to 10 new countries confirming this report. Click here to check it out yourself.
Though only the “send money” feature will be available for now, i believe with time the full features of Paypal will be unlocked for these countries.
What do you think of this great news?
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This is good news for some of us in these countries doing business online.
But take note that in this first stage, we can only make payments. It won’t be possible to withdraw to local banks until next stage.
This is already a good beginning though
Wooooooww!!! This is superb!!! I will be the first to sign up!!! Count down to Tuesday has begun!!!
As good as we want it to sound.it’s not authentic as there are other sites that could have carried the news.
It’s fake news.according to PayPal, such info would be on their blog/site.This is after speaking with a rep who took time for verification
When would Nigerians free themselves of this colonial mentality? PayPal have treated Nigerians with contempt and now hoping to charge them for the privilege. Plurality is good for any market, but please we should stop pretending as if this is the home coming of our messiah. PayPal will offer no unique features to Nigeria and most of us are happy with our own indigenous Voguepay.
Wake up and grow some confidence Nigerians!
Thank you for this comment. Paypal labelled us criminals for so long. Now, after watching the recent growth into billions of USD in the Nigerian online market, they suddenly developed interest and now want to look past our criminality. We dont need them here. Nigerians have already stood up to fill in the gap, they are not better than Quickteller, CashEnvoy, VoguePay, SimplePay and all those great Nigerian processors that serviced our businesses when they left us to die out.
Paypal is not welcome for all I care…
Great … Nice post
Well i am waiting to see Paypal fully operational in Nigeria. They cannot afford to keep ignoring Nigeria, unless they dont want more money, the market is here now.
..This will be a hard sale. All the emails I get from Nigeria are Scams and phishing. This does not a good deal for people in US, just another way for them to steal from our accounts. I may have to change my on line banking service.
It will be totally wrong to assume every Nigerian is a scammer, there are some of us that are honest….are you saying such privilege should be denied us? Paypal only allows the send money feature for now, i hope they can find a way to keep the service free from scammers.
Hi Nwosu!
Great to see you again.An official statement has been made by Paypal to extend their services to 10 new countries confirming this report.Keep Such sharing ideas in the Future. Thank you for your good information.
Its good to bring programs like that across the globe. It will help cut down on fraud and other risks.