Danie Roux

We South Africans are now again allowed to create Paypal accounts. Go ahead, try it. You will be up and ready to pay/receive money in under 10 minutes.

Seven months ago was the last time I tried to create a Paypal account. I was greeted with the familiar message “because of banking laws in South Africa you can not create an account”. Or some such legal reason.

The reason I wanted to do that then was to sponsor Vim. Tonight I was going to prepare for the final step of Moneybookers registration so that I can finally tick of the goal I set of to do a year and a half ago.

But realising that I am still too lazy to find a scanner and that I am not really sure it will be the end of the epic Moneybookers registration journey; I tried Paypal again for luck. Lo and behold, it worked! Within 10 minutes I was registered and I made my donation to Vim.

Compare this to the pain of Moneybookers. Seven months ago Vim made it possible to donate via Moneybookers. I was very excited to see this. I created the account and hoped to be using my credit card within days (at the utmost) to start throwing money at people. I was wrong:

Moneybookers first deducts some random amount under €2. You have to then check on your credit card statement to find that number, so that you can verify it with Moneybookers. Since my online statement only shows the amount in my own currency, I had to wait a full 4 weeks to get my paper statement. I then typed in the magic number, hoping to really now start laying out the cash – but then Moneybookers insisted that I now send them a copy of the paper statement. Preferably via fax. Scanned if I really have no other choice.

So I lost interest. Faxing via a long distance call does not appeal to me and I don’t have easy access to a scanner.

With Paypal, they only need you to go through the verification pain if you want to receive or spend more than $100. Huge positive difference from Moneybookers, since I don’t intend to spend more than $100 per payment anytime soon.

The verification pain from Paypal also consists of a random amount substracted from your account. The difference here is that they put that amount in the description of the transaction, so I can go read it off as soon as it appears on my online statement.

Lesson to be learned: People are lazy, make it easy for them to throw money at you.

Thank you Paypal for finally being in South Africa. I will make use of your services often but in small amounts.

Update: No, Paypal doesn’t yet allow you to receive any money. Moneybookers do.