Paypal resumes local bank transfers to India
thepaypalblog.com
thepaypalblog.com
1. Possibly the regulators were at fault here, however Paypal acted in a very intransparent and user-hostile way. I issue with Paypal in not (at least the largest issue) the outage.
2. The whole drama lasted for a month, during this time all the communication from Paypal was two blog posts, and no personal mails to the merchants.
3. Paypal tried very hard to sweep this whole issue under the carpet, the first communication from them(on their blog, not a personal mail) DAYS AFTER the problem was there, and already known.
4. In themselves they are not big, but there some outright factual inaccuracies/lies on that Blog. (Eg it says a check transfer takes 4-5, days, which is wrong, it is sent by Paypal in 4-5 days, and can take upto 45 days for delivery)
5. Nobody at Paypal was willing to take responsibility, and provide a timeline for resolution.
Paypal was an extremely preferred provider in India, but they have lost all credibility now. I have talked to more than a few people who are not going to use it anymore.
I was a huge fan of Paypal, and used it as my preferred payment processor. Last year I would have made > 5000USD for Paypal. I will still use because its convenient for a number of people, but it wont be my preferred processor, and I hope to convince more people to use other alternatives.
And the biggest kicker is that in spite of the outages, Paypal could have been seen as a consumer friendly company if only they.
1. Were more honest about the problems.
2. Provided more communication to the merchants.
3. (Hopefully) provided a timeline for resolutions.
How effective do you think that would have been at achieving expeditious resolution for Paypal's customers? I have suspicions which I cannot share with you because, hey, my day job also will need a (another) rubber stamp in the near future and I don't want to make difficulty for them.
2. Its easy to blame the regulators, however, a) Paypal has never claimed what the exact problems were. b) If it was recent change which put them in this position, or were they in violations of existing laws. c) Were they informed of the problem earlier that this, and given an option to tell the merchants.
You have to think that some other online payment company would be planning to buy ads online and run a billboard campaign in some of the larger cities in an attempt to gain share.
As for competitors, there are very few PP competitors that you can really count on. There's XOOM, I but never used it, as none of my professional acquaintances can vouch for it. When it comes to transferring money, people get really careful, and PP has a lot of credibility (so far, at least).
Now that PayPal is actually clearing the regulatory hurdles, I expect a lot more players in the fray who will take advantage of the emerging clarity how to deal with cross-border transfers.