Paypal’s answers for questions raised by Indian freelancers

Paypal account holders raised a number of questions following the suspension of withdrawals to Indian banks and money transfers to personal accounts. The following were the answers provided by paypal’s Indian representative Anju.

1. Why did you suspend local bank transfers and personal payments to and from India?

We temporarily suspended these services to respond to enquiries from the Indian regulators, specifically questions on whether personal payments constitute remittances into India.

We’re working with the regulators and our bank processing partners in India to get this resolved as quickly as we can. We realize that this is causing considerable inconvenience to our customers and I want to reassure you that this is a top priority for the leadership at PayPal

2. When will personal payments be turned back on?

The regulators recently let PayPal know about revised licensing rules that we are now actively engaged in securing. Personal payments to and from India will be suspended for at least a few months until we fully resolve the questions from the Indian regulators.

3. When will local bank withdrawals be available?

Customers should be able to withdraw their funds to a local bank within the next few days. In the meantime, we’re going to restore the money into the PayPal accounts of any customers in India who have initiated a recent withdrawal, so they know that the money is safe in their accounts. Customers will also be reimbursed for any withdrawal fee charges.

4.The PayPal reversal has left me with a negative balance. What shall I do?

If you bought something or transferred money out of your PayPal account to your bank account before we reversed the payment then you may be left with a negative balance.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, you should contact the sender and have him or her resend the payment as follows:

(a) click the Send Money tab, and

(b) select “purchase.”

If this was a personal payment, then the sender will need to find another payment method until we restore the service. We’re sorry about this.

If you can’t recover the funds from the sender, you can bring your PayPal balance current by logging in to the PayPal account and clicking the “Resolve Negative Balance” link on the Account Overview page.

5. My payment was reversed but it was not a personal payment. What happened?

Only personal payments should have been reversed. Customers who believe that their payments were reversed in error should request that the payment be sent again by following the steps above (click the Send Money tab and select “purchase.”)

If you are still having problems, please contact PayPal customer support

I hope that this helps clear up some of the confusion around the situation in India and I’d like to take the opportunity to personally apologize on behalf of PayPal for the inconvenience that this is causing our customers.

Indian freelancers are very much concerned with the progress in the talks between Paypal and RBI. It is not possible to withdraw money or convert dollars into rupees at least for a few months from now!

If you are one among the millions of Indian freelancers, watch out for various other payment solutions through with you can get paid in Indian rupees. I ll get back to you with all possible financial solutions in the next post. Meanwhile you can post your views and suggestions as comments.