Title of the article, Author name in the subject line
How government is inadvertently taking money from Indians and giving money to PayPal while “protecting” Indians
PayPal is trusted internationally, and a lot of freelancers and companies like to be paid via PayPal. Though it’s true that PayPal is usually used by Indians to receive money, Indians are now sending more and more money to other countries as we contract and subcontract our work.
The Indian government is doing two things which are hurting people who receive money and individuals who pay money.
First, PayPal is not allowed to accept money in INR so we have to invoice in USD. The receiver is forced to pay the currency exchange charges which is as much as 4% in addition to the 4-5% PayPal takes for receiving payments.
Second, if you are someone who not only receives payments but sends payments as well, you are in for a nasty surprise. Even if you have money in your PayPal account, you still have to make payment with your debit/credit card. So, you have to pay the currency conversion fee from INR to USD again.
As an example, if you get 100 USD from a client and you have to pay same 100 USD to a freelancer, you lose 7-8 USD in the process, and that’s not including PayPal fee which, if included can make it 12-13 USD.
If the government just lets users pay with the money they have in PayPal account, users will save that 7-8 USD which are going in PayPal’s pocket.
I understand that laws protect people, but these are obvious things which are financially hurting the same people they are supposed to protect.