You Can Search, But Not Shop, In South Africa
from the complaints,-complaints,-complaints... dept
Apparently, people in South Africa are getting annoyed that they can't use PayPal. The article linked here points out that Google now supports four different languages in South Africa, but PayPal (owned by eBay) refuses to handle payments from the country (despite having a South African co-founder -- who no longer works at the company). What's most interesting, however, is how "PayPal" is being looked upon as sort of a worldwide currency exchange system. The complaints seem to focus on the inability to buy something on eBay, where the seller asks to be paid via PayPal. It wasn't that long ago that the idea that you could sell some product from your home and have someone else buy it easily in South Africa (well, apparently, not South Africa yet...) would have seemed like a big deal. But, in some sense, in the places where PayPal does work, it's made international transactions easier. That's clearly evident by the anger people in other countries feel about not having access to this transaction system. The fact that PayPal (even on a small scale) is making it easier to buy and sell goods internationally, is something that hasn't received that much attention.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
