Using Paypal in South Africa
I have had a Paypal account for almost two years now but had not linked it to any credit card. Having applied and obtained my first credit card I decided to link it to my Paypal account.
The details required are:
- Card type : (Mastercard , Visa e.t.c)
- Billing address
- Your card number
- Security code -three digit number behind your card
Limitations For South African Users.
Fortunately South Africa is among the countries supported by PayPal BUT unfortunately all you can do with your PayPal account is send money but you can’t receive money via PayPal.
Image: PayPal Supported Countries
South Africans can receive money into their Paypal accounts BUT they cannot withdraw it into a local bank account. That means that South African E-commerce sites cannot accept PayPal transactions because they will not be able to withdraw from payments made into their PayPal accounts.
Why South Africans can’t withdraw PayPal funds to local bank accounts ?
South African Revenue Services (SARS) wants to oversee all forms of income transactions including online sales revenues so as to ensure proper taxation. The controls (Clearence forms e.t.c) that SARS wishes to impose are completely incompatible with the PayPal System.
This is bad for South Africans wishing to receive funds via PayPay but then again this is the trend worldwide. Out of 190 supported countries, only 39 (20.5%) allow withdrawal to a local based account. Another 6(3%) countries support check payments from PayPay or withdrawal to a US-based account.
At least South Africa is among the partially supported countries. All we can hope for is that banking practices are reviewed to allow businesses the full benefit of PayPal transactions.
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May 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 am
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May 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 am
Thanks for dropping by a comment at my site.
Are there any countries that are only partially supported by paypal?
Using paypal is part of a future plan of mine.
Eric
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
The List of supported countries can be found here
https://www.paypal.com/row/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries
May 8th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I have a South African account and friends cant transfer money to my PP account from the states for some reason.
Has this changed?
May 8th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Hi there,
You might have some of your info mixed up there. When signing up with PayPal as a South African user you cannot receive money into your account. So even if you have an offshore account but you register as a South African User and add the offshore account to your paypal,it will be pointless because YOU CANNOT RECEIVE MONEY!
One option (which is kind of illegal but I know of many who do it) is to register on paypal as a US or UK resident, then get a friend in the US or UK to give you their address and telephone number, use that as your registration details, then open an offshore account with eTrade and you’re all set to receive money via paypal (Limited to USD$500 per month withdrawal unless you can provide a valid US secial security number)
There are of course other means of accepting credit cards online for south african companies, there is Moneybookers.com and netcash.co.za which is rather cheap compared to other places and banks that want to charge you +- R400 per month for the facility.
But as for PayPal, no luck for you, you can send, not receive!
David.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:26 am
on a slight off topic but to do with PayPal -
if you want to purchase items internationally that do not deal with South Africa but you can use PayPal to pay for your purchases, I recommend using the Postal Forward service.
This is service where you get a legitimate US address and for a fee they will forward all your mail/ packages to South Africa !
This is how you get around those pesky websites who classify the whole of Africa as “dangerous” to deal with.
Some examples: http://www.usamail1.com or https://www.myuspostbox.com (there are more on Uncle Google.com)
just a tip…
http://thetechieguy.wordpress.com
May 8th, 2008 at 5:27 am
@david
Ey dude we seem to be on the same page here. I dont see were we contradict ??
May 8th, 2008 at 5:32 am
@ismail
You actually can receive money into your PayPal account
BUT
YOU CAN’T TRANSFER THAT MONEY INTO A LOCAL BANK ACCOUNT e.g Nedbank FNB e.t.c
June 9th, 2008 at 3:29 am
can you trasfer money from paypal to moneybookers?
June 9th, 2008 at 5:39 am
I don’t think it is possible to do a Paypal -> moneybookers transfer.
Moneybookers provides full service in South Africa but people still prefer Paypal…. strange
July 21st, 2008 at 12:26 am
WARNING
Stay away from moneybookers.
moneybookers is not a scam BUT their service is so poor (to say its crap would be polite)
People you might as well transact via “Postal Check” than through moneybookers.