PayPal Payments Up in India Again

After the suspension of payments to, from India via PayPal was announced a few weeks ago, a new blog
post on the official Paypal blog has some good news for millions of PayPal users across the country. PayPal India has announced the resumption of the payment services and has confirmed that the Reserve Bank of India has given a green signal to restart bank withdrawals for settlements for exports of goods and services. Not all is well though as personal payments are still “turned off”.

The revamped withdrawal system involves users to fill an “export code” to initiate a withdrawal. This is as per the directive of the RBI, which wants this implemented to see more control and watch over the nature of cross-border merchant transactions. This means that personal payments will remain banned till PayPal gets the approval to allow personal inward remittances to India. This is something PayPal does not have as of now. In short, personal payments will remain banned till PayPal gets these necessary approvals.

Personal payments stand banned for all Indian PayPal users (Business, Premier and Personal Account Holders). The option your overseas clients are now left with to pay you is to use the “Pay for Purchases” (Goods or  Services) tab, completing PayPal checkout at your website or by responding to PayPal “Request Money” instructions (invoices).

In any payment, when you instruct PayPal to withdraw your PayPal balance to your bank account in India, you will be required to provide a purpose code for the transaction. The purpose codes will help the RBI identify the kind of transaction you carry out. For more on the purpose codes, read this entry at the Paypal Blog.

If you happen to be a PayPal user, how has this affected you and what do you think about these new directives? Do let us know in the comments section below.