Vishal Batish

In one of the strangest moves by PayPal, one of the leading online money transfer company, funds TO and FROM India have been stopped. According to post appeared on TechCrunch, PayPal is RESOLVING the issue and till the time issue is resolved, personal or even business accounts cannot receive or send funds from/to anywhere. We do understand there can be some glitch in online system but Why payments already in account are being reversed back to sender? This is a serious business issue specially for companies/ individuals who accept payments from across the globe in lieu of services/ products. Reversal of charges has put many companies in very uncomfortable position. Taking an example of Online Florist – being Valentine season around,  online flower and gifts companies must be getting orders from across globe. Now with orders placed  or some even executed and with PayPal reversing the charges, what surety  does the merchant have to get the payment. Shoppers may not pay up again and this comes out as serious business loss for online companies.

Now what can trigger such a move by PayPal.

1. Technical Glitch: Well, reversal of charges doesn’t look like a technical glitch.
2. Issues With Govt/ Regulating agencies: Well, that can also be a case but it should affect a whole financial year or it would have been in news.
3. Payment Fraud: Could be possible there has been a payment fraud and PayPal is trying to resume things as they were few days back.

Added On 7th Feb 2010…

PayPal is having major issue with accounts, Yesterday I tried to take out funds from my PayPal account (They gave a Rate of 45.06 INR per USD). They reversed another payment from my account to a client and reversed the withdraw @ 48.12 INR per USD. Which means for every 100$ I requested to withdraw, they not only did not transfer the amount to my business account but also reversed the withdrawal that I requested back to my PayPal account to give me 93$ (approx). Strangely they took off 7 $ per 100$ I requested for transfer.

I had a word on PayPal’s customer care, they were clueless about what is happening in India but assured me they will revert back the difference arising from $ conversion. Well, That is a relief, but the bigger question is still there, how long will it take for them to resolve this whole issue of not accepting the payment !!

The good thing is that you can get your payment to business accounts if your client send you money after selecting “Goods” and filling in a “shipping address”. But in most of the cases like online shopping, it still is a serious issue.