Honestly guys you need to realise that paypal is not going to support Pakistan anytime soon. Forget what their website says. They don't support 190 countries. In reality paypal fully supports just 28 countries or less. Out of 200 countries world wide paypal only allows the residents of 28 countries to send, receive and withdraw money. Not a single one of those 28 countries is a Muslim country. Even the Malaysians can only send and receive but not withdraw money. In such a situation you can imagine that it will take paypal at least 5 years to fully support Pakistan. In the meantime you should use it with the help of business partners or relatives like mani does or avoid paypal entirely and use 2co or something else. Of course a freelancer not having paypal is almost like a business not having a telephone. Clients will send their business elsewhere. But what can you do ?
Agreed.. However, I've NEVER understood one thing. If freelancers, and businesses can use paypal, and accept or make payments.. why don't they simply add the option of MoneyBookers, or anything similar?
Why do you THINK that? There has to be some reason. huh? There are many leading international banks in Pakistan, like CitiBank and Standard Chartered .. why CitiBank would be happy to cooperate with paypal in India or US but not in Pakistan? The only reason why PayPal is not for Pakistan is they simply don't see much business in there. Time, money and effort required to add 'new' country in PayPal list must be worth the profit coming from that country. PayPal will add Pakistan in their list, and you will find every bank cooperating with them as soon as they see enough business in Pakistan. Companies like that are all about money, and have nothing to do with anything else .. like a Muslim country as someone mentioned.
Well.. as abdussamad said.. Even if they DO add pakistan as an option, it'll probably be useless! They will not fully support pakistan right from the start. You can expect them to add, and then fully support pakistan in the next 4 years or more. Don't expect anything less than that. THe list of FULLY supported countries is TINY compared to the list of supported countries!
Unless you work for paypal you have no way of knowing their reasons for support a country or not. The same goes for eddy. Don't you think there is money in the middle east? All that oil and tourism wealth and plenty of web masters as well let me tell you. Why doesn't paypal fully support any of the middle eastern countries? Why has it recently added limited support for the Maldives? The Muslim Maldives is a small chain of islands in the indian ocean. They are a tourist hotspot for westerners but even still their economy is tiny compared to any one middle eastern country. I have no idea how paypal decides what countries to support but I think the profit motive is not the only criteria. If profit was there main criteria they would support the middle east and Pakistan. Pakistan has 12 million internet users and could easily become a large freelance provider like India.
Just to add on it.. pakistan has its share of talented individuals when it comes to web engineering and freelancing.. however, we've never been given the opportunity, or motivated... to exploit em!! Just my $0.02
I say @#$%@#% paypal and if a customer is offering only paypal payments, in a simple word, "ignore"! If you really think there's a lot of talent in Pakistan, then have the talent combine against paypal. If the talent is really worth it, people will be more than willing to pay via moneybookers or a more globalized payment solution.
You can't really ignore all customers. You could end up losing $XXXX just because of this paypal problem.
I cannot agree with "abdussamad" more. BUT the problem is you cannot do anything about it and the ONLY solution is to concentrate on extreme high quality of your work so that you BECOME very important for your buyer ONLY then your buyer will come to anywhere and will go through all the hectic procedures of MB just to pay you and get his work done from you. So the key to this problem (in my mind) is let us improve ourselves so that they come to us irrespective of all the problems they have to face for paying us.
Wel i am a freelancer, i accept payments by moneybooker, e-gold and westurn union, but the problem is at client side, will you believe i lost many big projects, the reason was that the client was going to pay by paypal only, no other option. wel i think Paypal is available in SaudiArab and United Arab Emarites(UAN) am i rite??
Yea that's a real bummer, which is why I was helping people that had that problem. I second what 007A mentioned so you don't miss out on those big projects. PayPal is available in Saudia Arabia and United Arab Emarites - but those that open an account in those countries can only use it to send money. Click here for a list of countries available to open accounts with PayPal.
Exactly... in reality.. they FULLY support a minor list of countries.. the rest of the so called 'supported countries' have the ability to only SEND money.. they can't receive it, or withdraw it. Effectively.. while we might argue over how essential paypal is for us, you can expect it to fully support Pakistan in the next 5-6 years.. i don't expect anything sooner than that..!
To me I think it will take 8-10 years It does not look like they will accept us anytime soon unless miracle happens (which infact do happen)
They do happen (Miracles).. but in the case of paypal.. i would say.. FAT chances of a miracle! They have nothing to lose out of not supporting us!
I'm not sure why they are not supporting Pakistan as Pakistan has a growing IT industry which will be three times as it is now in couple of years. I don't see any reason for not including Pakistan in PayPal's allowed list. Few days ago I was checking the list of countries PayPal allowed (send only countries too) and I saw very small African countries and I was amazed. It smells like a personal issue to me otherwise Pakistan would've been in the list of PayPal supported countries. Whenever a Pakistani sent them email they said "we are continuously adding countries and soon will add more countries" cut the crap, they are giving the same answer for over 2 years now. Maybe it is due to some political reason????????