Full Paypal Phillipines Support: What does it mean?

Recent news of Paypal Philippines now being able to send and receive funds have been making rounds in the blogosphere. When Paypal first became available in the Philippines some 12 months ago, it was a little disappointing then because the only way Philippine-based members can use it is by sending funds. Receiving funds was not still allowed then.

This development has finally made Paypal support in full circle. However, there are still some caveats. First, despite the fact that you can now send and receive funds via Paypal, there is no practical way to getting those funds locally, unless of course you have a US-based bank or a US-based credit or debit card.

So what does this mean? Well, like many other countries listed as having Paypal support, it’s not really what others would call “Full Paypal Support”. Well, its obvious from my previous statements. Even if us Filipinos can receive payments via Paypal, the only way to can easily dispose of those funds is by using it to purchase services or goods online as well. This makes the recent limited support practically useless to 99.9% of Filipino Paypal users in the country.

In that end, one would still have to use other 3rd party services like Xoom to actually send funds and deposit them to local banks. That makes it more expensive actually since money will have to go thru 2 channels now instead of one.

So, the next time someone asks if they can remit payments to you via Paypal, you might want to reconsider.