Paypal New Rules Sucks! Indian Freelancers To Suffer The Most

Update: Paypal has now lifted this limited and now users can receive funds upto $3000 at once.

From 1 March 2011  for Indian users, PayPal is no more the easiest way to pay. PayPal team last night sent out some shocking new rules to Indian PayPal users by sending them a surprise Email last night. In the Email PayPal team stated new terms and rules for Indian PayPal users.

So here’s the preview of that shocking mail from paypal to Indian customers.

With effect from 1 March 2011, you are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).
In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:

1. Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
2. Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.

We seek your understanding as we continue to employ our best efforts to comply with the RBI Guidelines in a timely manner.

Which means:

1. Indian PayPal account holders cannot receive payment of more than $500 per transaction for export items and services.
2. You will not be allowed to purchase items or services online using your PayPal account if you are in India. That means, from 1’st march 2011 you can’t use PayPal to pay for hosting charges or to buy items on web.
3. You must transfer any funds in from PayPal to your bank account within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services. Even if you receive a payment in your PayPal, you will have to withdraw that within 7 days of transaction confirmation to your bank account.

These are the new restrictions and limitations coming on PayPal from effect of 1’st March 2011 for Indian users. PayPal says these new guidelines are in order to follow the guidelines from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) due to TOS of Indian currency rotation rule.

According to the Indian Currency Rotation Act:

• Any company keeping money for more than  7 days have to pay interest and should be treated like a bank.
• Any transaction which bring money more than $500 at one go, should be reported to RBI.

Whoever is to blame, its really going to get hard for freelancers who have no Credit Card, blogger can’t use Paypal anymore to pay hosting and domain renewal. And cannot keep money for more than 7 days in their paypal account. And it will badly going to effect users who get small payments, because paypal would charge them 50 INR for transferring funds to their bank accounts. For instance you are getting a payment of $5(225INR) in your PayPal account, the after transaction fee of 50, you would get only 175INR in your bank account.  So this is a very disappointing move from PayPal and RBI.

Lets home that they would bring some positive changes in the above rules, considering the fact that there are huge number of freelancers and bloggers in Indian who reply on PayPal for online transactions.

Paypal India office only one branch in India which is in Chennai. If you would like to get in touch with them directly, then here’s the address and contact details.

Paypal India Pvt Ltd
No 334, Futura IT Park, Block A,
Old Mahabalipuram Road,
Sholinganallur
Chennai - 600119

Phone number to contact Paypal Chennai Office –
+ 91 044 66348000, +91 044 66348001

If you are someone who is also the one suffering from the new rule then you can post your comment below.