PayPal Funds Transfer Within India Soon With Domestic Payment Approval

In spite of so many restrictions, PayPal remains a popular choice of online payments. Recent news says that PayPal has received an approval for Domestic Transfer in India. It means, customers in India will be able to use PayPal to make payment to a merchant based in India. In other words, an Indian would be able to transfer money to other Indian’s PayPal account.

According to an internal e-mail sent by PayPal India GM, PayPal is now authorised to offer domestic payment processing services in India, and that the solution can be offered for online, mobile, offline (PayPal Here), for all industries as permitted by law. (source –Medianama)

Current PayPal Restrictions in India

PayPal is available in India for both merchants and customers however, there are may restrictions placed by RBI.

• Domestic (India to India) Fund Transfer cannot be done.
• You cannot receive more than $3000 per transaction.
• PayPal Funds cannot be used for any purchase online.
• PAN Card and Bank account is mandatory to get verified. (Verify PayPal account without Credit Card)
• Funds in PayPal account are automatically withdrawn to Bank account next day.
• Credit Card is necessary if you want to use PayPal as payment option on any merchant site. (Easy Approval Credit Cards for Bloggers, Freelancers in India)

Benefit to Indian Merchants And Freelancers

For Merchants with a target customer base as India has to opt for NEFT (Bank Transfer) or implement a Payment gateway on their website like CCAvenue to accept payments. This is because domestic transfers are only possible only through banks at the moment.

NEFT is more of a manual/laborious thing whereas installing payment gateway is a pricy affair. On the other hand, implementing PayPal payments on webpage is as simple as adding a banner and moreover Free.

If you have opened up a small e-commerce store (planning to sell items as small as ebooks) or provide online consultancy/web services, PayPal would make things easy. Yes, it will be possible to accept payments as you used to receive in 2010.

What Isn’t Clear?

As per the news, domestic payments in India via PayPal is approved. One thing isn’t clear whether a customer will be able to use funds in PayPal for transaction or credit card will be necessary.

Also, the date when domestic PayPal transfer in India will come to take effect isn’t mentioned. When Medianama asked PayPal about it, they neither confirmed nor denied the news.

Benefit To Customers

Indian customer is now flooded with payment options and people are now more used to Internet Banking. Domestic transfer using PayPal will be a real improvement if they allow use of funds in PayPal for transaction. Otherwise, we can directly use Credit Cards on Payment gateway.

It will be interesting to see when PayPal opens office in India and ties up with banks in India to give competition to existing payments gateways and other mobile money transfer platforms.