Comment by yashg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yashg | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I am the author and yes RBI and PayPal both are to be blamed here. I would like to hold balance in My PayPal account only because of a possibility of a chargeback or a dispute. I lament RBI for not allowing me to do that.

I lament PayPal because when they take $200 from me, they should return me $200 and NOT $180. I have not said anything about the chargeback charges. I did not pay anything for chargeback because I refunded the transaction. I DO understand that chargebacks are a part of business.

My grouse is with the ridiculous pretense under which PayPal duped me out of $24.99 (over two cancellations) in the name of currency conversion charges.

Take a look at this - http://i.imgur.com/GIaP5O2.png

Does it look like a fair deal from any angle?

//he's still using PayPal, and yet he hates it that much?//

Yes because I don't have any other options - at least for now. Indian Payment gateways won't allow me to charge in USD, and I can't use Stripe/Dwolla or any half decent system because I am not in the US or Europe.

No way is the RBI ever going to allow parking funds in a non-banking institution in a country where tax evasions are so high.

By the way they are not be blamed here, the fraud prevention policy is in place because fraud happens.

Right, so they'd rather have companies incorporating in other countries for the sole purpose of being able to collect money from their customers! Seems legit.

For instance - http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us-corporatio...

That's an even better way to save taxes. Delaware has 8% tax. India has 30%. People won't even bring the money in India.

RBI is treating PayPal as some swiss bank account. Keeping all the USD balance in PayPal doesn't make sense. I have to bring the money in India because I need to pay the bills and salary and all. And the PayPal balance doesn't earn any interest. But when I have to pay the hosting charges or domain registration charges which are in USD why should I not be able to use some money from my PayPal account which is already in USD? RBI insists that money first come to an Indian bank and then used for paying abroad. Again costing me conversion fees every time the money crosses the border.

Its not just the black money, its consumer protection that the Government is keen on.

India Government just wants Paypal to behave like a bank if they are going to hold consumer;s money. If Paypal follows the regulation, they will end up paying interest on the money they hold. And they will forced to insure the amount.

And paypal works around this issue by pushing the money to consumers bank when it reaches the legal limit.

You can't blame the Government for this mess. Its Paypal that is working around the system.

Paypal is not working around the system: they are simply not a bank. They are a payment processor. Just think about what would happen to the fees that he already complains about if they had to insure the deposits.

And a payment processor should not hold the customer's money for a longer duration. That is what the Government is trying to push them into complying. Just like any other payment processors operating in the country, Paypal can also keep the money with them for just enough duration that is required to process the payment. After that they need to TRANSFER the amount and not hold it with them.

If the India Govt relaxes it for Paypal, multitude of such payment processors would start operating and one day you would see them disappear with people's money. Then again you will blame the Govt.

>>Right, so they'd rather have companies incorporating in other countries for the sole purpose of being able to collect money from their customers! Seems legit.

Software companies != Entire Indian economy. Software is relatively recent and accounts for a little part to move economic conditions of larger Indian masses.

Also at a time when every one is coming to India to set up shops here, no one is going to move out. That was a good Idea probably in the 1980's. Not any more.

Given say 20 years of future from now. The Indian market has more room to grow that the US. I would even go to extent to say, any one who is moving out of India now is making a very big mistake.

Can you not get a USD bank account in India? Paypal would then not need to do any conversion and you could do the transfer yourself from USD to INR using your preferred exchange.

I can. It's called Exchange Earner's Foreign Currency (EEFC) Account but PayPal converts the money before they send it to my bank account. So even if I had that account, they will still send me INR.

Because RBI's policies have given them another way to make some extra money.

Correct.

I'm in Canada and my PayPal is USD because i use ebay a lot. My attempt to set up a "US Funds" account for Paypal at TD Canada Trust met with them converting money from a Canadian buyer to US then to CAD just in time for TD to convert it to US to go into the account.

Clearly, I halted that after a day.

PayPal insists that it's impossible to transfer money in any currency except the one related to the address of the bank's head office.

If you use RBC's US routing number for your USD account it is possible to withdraw USD from Paypal Canada directly into your USD funds account. I confirmed that this works:

http://bradt.ca/blog/transfer-from-paypal-to-a-us-dollar-acc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com