Indian Paypal users mostly small merchants, freelancers, independent software developers and hobbyists are dismayed by Paypal’s unprofessional way of halting transactions to India. It did not give a formal notice or any direct information to its users. This can least be expected from a company as large as Paypal.
What PayPal users wish was that Paypal could have atleast informed them before a transaction was being done or an alert to every Paypal user. However, Paypal only informed when the user was unable to send or receive the payment and later tries to contact the customer support.
Contacting customer support, one gets a canned reply as follows:
Personal Payment – Send Money for India Accounts
• India customers are no longer able to see the option to send a Personal payment on the Send Money page • They can continue to use other payment options, such as eBay checkout.
If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select ‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.
If this payment was a personal payment, such as a gift to a friend or family member, then we request that you find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.
Although India customers are unable to send Personal payments, they are still receiving Personal payments from Non India customers.
• In order to stop ALL Personal payments TO and FROM India accounts, we have started reversing Personal payments sent by Non India customers starting today. (the only exception will be in cases where the buyer has included a shipping address – we don’t want to delay any shipment of goods)
• Emails will be sent to both sender and recipient to let them know why the money was returned and what options they have to proceed forward. (see attached for examples)
• We are also in the process of implementing a change on the website to automatically stop the payment from processing, rather than waiting to reverse the payment. We will send you additional updates as soon as we have more details.
The Personal payment option on the International Send Money page has been updated and India has been removed from the ‘select a country’ drop down list.
• If the payment was for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then the buyer may resend the payment to the seller by following these steps on the PayPal website: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select ‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.
Looks like PayPal was unable to resolve questions or submit documents requested by Indian Regulatory Authorities
PayPal has always been an issue for Indian users. Many Indian credit cards are just blocked by Paypal stating it is not valid when an user tries to add his credit card to the account.
A new service called AlertPay has been started which is much similar to PayPal with all its features. I guess its time to move on to another provider rather than hoping for the least concerned Paypal to resolve its issues.