PayPal Stops Personal Payments In Singapore http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/paypal-stops-personal-payments-in-singapore/ PayPal will stop allowing personal payments in Singapore on February 20. It said in an email to members that this was due to "regulatory instructions". People will still be able to make commercial payments for goods and services with their accounts, such as at online merchants, or receive funds, but we can expect that fund transfers between personal accounts will be halted. They're not clear on exactly what sort of fund transfers will be stopped, but this seems in line with what happened in other countries. According to reports, PayPal Japan's personal account holders stopped being able to receive or send money to individuals in 2010, and now have to pay a business fee for transactions. The same year, users in Taiwan and Brazil reported that they stopped being able to send personal payments. PayPal's wording seems to suggest that users will still be able to receive payments from "sales and trading", so this shouldn't hurt individuals selling on eBay (which owns PayPal). However, many of the smaller blogshops in the region are run by individuals, and those transfers are to personal accounts. Blogging platform, LiveJournal, has said it has a global pool of over 50,000 blogshops. It said that the transaction volume of Singapore blogshops was $80 million in that year alone. Update: PayPal responded to say that personal payments such as cash gifts or living allowances won't be allowed. Underlying goods and services will be permitted, and this extends to commercial payments made and received by Singapore users covering personal, "premier" or business accounts. Users can also still receive funds from PayPal users outside of Singapore, and that is dependent on whether personal payments are allowed in the sender's country. Blogshops, you can rest easy. comment : Paypal payment to individual is restricted now, over here, so we can no longer BUZZ as easily a silver or a gold item as before. TT will involved seller to give up information on bank ac and so on, which sellers may not be willing to do, if a buyer has no feedback. etc :|
Given Singapore's banking secrecy, I doubt this "regulatory instruction" originated from the Singaporean government.
I don't usually send personal payments abroad but when I do it is always because the seller doesn't want to pay tax for selling me something online. Most often it is a private individual but a couple of companies have asked me to send payment as a gift. One guy in China cancels the whole eBay transaction after the goods have arrived in Australia so he doesn't pay tax. Then if I trade with someone in Europe they get hit with import tax even though they haven't bought or sold anything, just swapped like for like. You can understand people not wanting to record transactions if they know it will lead to further costs. I wonder if it was a PayPal idea or whether a few Governments gave them a bit of a nudge.
PayPal recently did something similar in Argentina. Too many people were using PayPal to get out of the Argentine peso into some other currency.
haha, I don't remember the time when personal transactions were available in Japan ... thought it was the only country ... welcome Singapore to the club P.S. if I want to exchange money - I buy silver, sell it via paypal for the currency I want ... easiest way for me.
there must be a complaint from the banks, then they realised that people who use this can get cash at lower rates. CC tag to PayPal, pay it to your friend, incurred a bit of fee, get the cash out from the other end, pay back the banks next month when due date. Its a direct competition with the bank cash facility with high interest rates, forgone income must be the motivation to dig out the use of paypal facility. for products payment/transfer are ok, since buyer does not have the usage of cash, and usually have money to settle the bills. it is somehow considered legitimate. currency conversion facilities, they are many safer alternative here locally. looks like CASH is still king in the system.
..or maybe the 1%fee is not enough for paypal,they want 2.5% or whatever they charge for business transaction...where and when greediness will stop?
PayPal is already charging 3.5% for personal payment fee paid via credit card. Perhaps it has to do with some banks here giving up to 5% rebate on cc spending. The bank must be complaining some ppl are earning free 1.5% using PayPal to send personal payment via cc. Anyway, I have never liked using PayPal for all the fees they imposed. Bank transfer works better for me so far.
Ok. I know this is a stupid question,but why doesn't PayPal Pte Ltd get a remittance license? Surely not too difficult? Some paperwork, a bribe (tax, fee, call it what you will) and, there you go! All done! Surely they have the equivalent in other countries? There's no restriction on moving money to overseas based NPO fom Australia is there (yet?)
Is OzForex available to you guys? Might work out cheaper than the banks, especially for larger purchases as the rates get better the more you spend and they usually send the money from an account in the country it is destined for, so none of those bank fees for transfers from out of country accounts.
Just wish to highlight that ozforex requires a minimum transfer amount of AUD2000. For my last purchase from ozbullion, had to rely on tranzfers which worked out cheaper for me compared to doing a wire transfer.
