Paypal Payments to India Being Reversed
If you receive payments via Paypal and you live in India, you will find anything sent as a personal payment reversed.
Things change rapidly across the internet and apparently Paypal which handles payment across the web and across the world has just put a new policy into place. It no longer sends personal payments to India.
Lots of writers who use sites like oDesk, associated Content, Triond and Factoidz may well be affected by this if those sites do not find a way round it.
I discovered this when I heard than a friend had his monthly earnings which add up to over a hundred dollars paid into his Paypal account and then found the transaction reversed. He immediately got onto the site and asked what was going on. A little investigation revealed that Paypal no longer accepts personal payments to India.
Customers who asked for clarification were sent the following reply:
“Your payment of 123456 has been sent back to the sender of the payment. We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.” (Quoted from Paypal email).
There is a way round this if you do send payments to India.
Apparently earnings from writing, affiliate earnings, etc are counted as ‘personal’ payments. If you click the option in the payment box for sending payment for ‘goods,’ the payment will be allowed. It might be worth telling any site that has trouble paying you via Paypal about this. The key is not to identify it as a ‘gift’ on the Paypal forms. This really is quite bizarre. I have not tried this so I cannot guarantee that it works.
However, the advice in the paragraph above does not apply every time. I also read that an Indian company paid via Paypal had withdrawn their money to their bank account a week previously and then found that the transaction had been reversed and the money was taken from their bank account.
Apparently this was done to stop large amounts of money being sent as personal payments to avoid Paypal fees. It seems that if the payments are made as business payments and the fees paid, they will go through.
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Surely these business and writing sites will be savvy enough to realize this, too. It’s just another challenge that the online freelance writer must overcome.
Apparently one or two have already been caught out by it. It seems that some sites have been sending payment via personal accounts instead of paying fees for business accounts and they have been caught, so Paypal has put a blanket stop on transactions to India via personal accounts until it sorts it out.
Unfortunately it doesn’t just affect writers but business people too.
great share..
My paypal amounts have been accumulating and I have not withdrawn any money so far. I haven’t attached any bank a/c; I have been planning to ask my daughter in the US to attach her bank a/c to my paypal account so that she can wihdraw. Don’t know if that works. I know people have reported problems about receiving money from Associated content. It’s good that you’re spreading the word and bringing about awareness.
very interesting
I feel bad for those people in India who have relied on this.
This is a great read. It’s a shame that the people in India will get deprived of getting their money.
Interesting. I wonder–does this have anything to do with India’s incredible tax system? I was reading in The Economist that transactions between states are taxed and that you have state taxes added on to federal taxes and all sorts of weirdness going on over there.
Inna
Interesting post….very nice share….
Thanks for bringing awareness.
Stop panicking guys. I am sure the issue will be resolved soon. I read people’s comment that Paypal is trying to get away with our money. That doesn’t make any sense to me, they would not risk the name and reputation they have earned till now. Think this way if they do this to us others would also lose trust in them and their customers would switch to other service providers. I think the reason is related to some RBI norms though I still don’t have a clear picture on that.
The solution is to ask your merchants to hold your payments till this issue is resolved so that you don’t lose your money.
Let’s wait and watch. Even I am also a victim of this issue!
Regards.
This is quite informative. I hope that this problem is resolved soon so that business people and others who use this system will be able to continue to conduct business.
What a shame folk are losing out this way. I hope it gets resolved.
maybe beacuse some of your nationals are involved with so many fraudalent transactions using paypal.