Paypal is not offering any respite to Indian users. I opened my mail-box earlier today and was greeted with following mail from Paypal.
As part of our commitment to provide a high level of customer service, we would like to give you a 30-day advance notice on changes to our user agreement for India.
With effect from 1 March 2011, you are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).
In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:
- Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
- Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.
We seek your understanding as we continue to employ our best efforts to comply with the RBI Guidelines in a timely manner.
We regret any inconvenience caused to you and hope the advance notice will enable you to plan your future use of our services accordingly.
Sincerely,The PayPal Team
To put simply, Paypal has now ordered Indian users to not to use any money in the paypal account other than transferring it to your bank account. So lets says you have 50 USD in your paypal account and you want to pay off your hosting services using that paypal money, you are out of luck. You can ONLY transfer it to your bank account..that’s it !
Additionally, as an Indian paypal user, you will not be able to receive more than 500 USD for your work in a single transaction. Obviously, there is a simple work-around to that my receiving payment higher than USD 500 in Multiple transactions !
All said and done, paypal is making life tougher for its Indian users. We REALLY need a paypal alternative !