By Afsana Zarin
The world has never been the same since the invention of the worldwide web. Around half of the world’s population are connected to the internet. As such, we’ve been hearing the word “digital” being thrown around a lot lately. Everyone wants to go digital and there has been a significant rise in the number of digital nomads worldwide. Millennials, who will be around 90% of the world’s population by 2020, prefer to live their live carpe diem style. They like flexible working hours, so, there has been a significant rise in the freelance workers worldwide. Many of the young people are taking freelancing as their profession these days. In 2015, Bangladesh had around 5.5 lac registered freelancers and it was ranked the 7th outsourcing destination of the world. Since then there has been a significant increase in the number of freelancers and outsourcing companies. However, even with this significant shift, receiving payment from abroad has always been an issue for this large group of freelancers.
To solve this problem, Sonali Bank has come to an agreement with PayPal, the world’s most popular online money transfer service owned by eBay. They signed a draft agreement with PayPal to extend their services in Bangladesh. A source confirmed that a team of PayPal officials recently made their visit to Bangladesh and underwent several meetings with the government and other associated bodies to formulate a viable operating policy for PayPal in Bangladesh. After the discussion, a draft was made and sent to the PayPal HQ at San Jose. The announcement from both parties is due soon. The Bangladesh government has been trying to bring PayPal services in Bangladesh for years. If everything goes right, this lengthy process is soon coming to a happy ending. Freelancers around the country are thrilled with this news of PayPal bringing their services to Bangladesh. Xoom, another PayPal service has been available in Bangladesh since November 2015 and can pick up cash directly from 15 partner local banks. Xoom also offers deposit services in more than 58 banks in Bangladesh.
With all this being said, let’s have a look at how PayPal works. There are more than 192 million active PayPal users in the world right now, making PayPal the world’s number 1 digital currency platform. PayPal works as a middleman for customer and merchant services. Sending money in PayPal is much faster than using cheques and money orders. It has a purchase protection feature which prevents frauds and keeps financial information private and secure. The money is transferred using the Payflow Gateway API and merchants can process debit and credit card payments, PayPal, PayPal Credit®, authorizations, captures, and credit voids through it. There are three kinds of services offered by PayPal: Personal, Premier, and Business. A personal account is for individuals who shop online. A premier account is for individuals who buy and sell online and the business feature is for the merchants who use a company or group name. To open a PayPal account, you need an email address and a credit card. After you have an account, you can send and request money through PayPal. There is an option to add your bank account to the PayPal account which allows you to transfer money to and from your bank and PayPal account. You can also use eBay Merchant tools for free.
PayPal coming to Bangladesh will not only smoothen the foreign payment process for the freelancers but around 900 e-commerce stores and 9,900 f-commerce stores will also be benefitted from it. These stores usually use bKash for payments but it has its limitations for sending money and cash out. PayPal might be the solution to replace the cash-on-delivery process on which most of the e-commerce and f-commerce stores rely. PayPal also works for the betterment of the ecosystem. For example, PayPal launched Recharge, a unique six-week program focused on empowering women technologists to get back to work after taking time off to explore their passions, develop interests and strengthen families. The program is a part of PayPal’s commitment towards nurturing a culture of diversity and inclusion in the technology industry.
However, not using PayPal according to the guidelines can be detrimental to the whole community. Currently in India, PayPal has stopped the personal payment option for the misuse of the Personal account.
We see an enormous potential for PayPal and the outsourcing industry in Bangladesh. But all these are speculations till PayPal and Sonali Bank seal their agreement officially.
The writer can be reached at afsana.nabila@gmail.com.
