Source: Fox Business
PayPal announced on Thursday, March 18 that they are expanding its business in order to enable customers to send money to people from Ukraine. Initially, Ukrainians could only avail PayPal’s services to send money away from the country. But now the extensions would permit these account holders to both send and receive funds from connections all around the world. The business is also allowing them to transfer the received funds from their wallet to banks accounts. However, they will have to link an eligible Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card.
Additionally, PayPal clarified that they would be doing away with the fees for customers sending to or receiving from Ukrainian PayPal accounts. The company’s international remittance service, Xoom will also remove the fees for payments sent to Ukrainian recipients. The government of Ukrainian requested the company to roll out new services enabling people in the country to receive payments. Mykhailo Federov applauded PayPal’s expansion:
Welcome to Ukraine! @PayPal, @Dan_Schulman, thank you for supporting Ukraine and peace! pic.twitter.com/RS632fessN
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 17, 2022
“We believe this service with be helpful for people in Ukraine to receive money from their friends and relatives around the world. It will also help Ukrainian refugees in other countries, so they can receive money to use or withdraw in their current location,” PayPal said in a letter.
Customers in Ukraine will be able to receive and send money from their PayPal wallets in currencies of USD, GBP, CAD and EUR. Once they make a transfer to an eligible card from their wallet, the fund will be available in the currency connected to the card.
This news comes forward as PayPal suspends its business in Russia. Similarly, even Apple and Google Pay had shut down its services in the country. In fact, even Mastercard and Visa halted their network services in Russia. This compelled Russia to switch to the Chinese card system, UnionPay.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, people have been hunting for ways to financially aid the people there. Chief Executive of Airbnb mentioned how many had booked Airbnbs in Ukraine when they didn’t even intend to stay there, but to extend their help Ukrainians. Ukraine has presently received donations in the form of cryptocurrencies worth millions from people who aimed to aid them in any way possible. Fortunately, the extension of PayPal’s services will introduce a more direct and easier way to help people in Ukraine. The functioning of the new services of the service were to start from Thursday itself.
