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Comment by praeivis | Hacker News Reader

Sorry about that...PayPal.Me isn't available in your country.

I love how you can't even see FAQ or About pages if you're not in the supported country. That's Google Play Store level UX.

Even if you are in a supported country, when setting up a page, the "Learn more about our fees" page is a 404: https://www.paypal.com/%7BcoBrand%7D/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees

From the FAQ:

> Is PayPal.Me available in my country?

> We’re adding new regions as fast as we can. Check back often to see if it’s available in your country.

That's just seriously bad. "Check back often" -- they won't even provide a list of currently-available countries, let alone a simple "leave your email for updates" box.

That's stupid, how can this kind of thing not be "available" in a country? It's totally isolated from the service

It's a financial service, they're covering their ass from unforeseen tax issues. If some people in Russia decide to use it, and paypal hasn't checked to be sure that this is all completely legit under Russian tax law, there will be huge problems for them.

But the argument is that if you can get a PayPal account in Russia, and if you can send money to that account given the existing PayPal user interface, how is this feature different?

But they won't even know where someone is right? Anyway I understand the point which also makes the argument for cryptocurrencies much stronger

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