The most trusted Internet Bank of the world – PayPal – is presently encountering a problem with regard to sending money to Indian Bank accounts.

In this Internet era, there may be only a few who are not aware of PayPal. Everyday some 30 million people are visiting the net world. Of them a majority are doing business with one website or the other. For all these commercial transactions of – online purchases; invoicing; collecting money from buyers and crediting the proceeds to the respective site, PayPal has been the first preference for years.

The best part is anyone having Internet access can easily open a PayPal account for free. No hassles, no commuting, no meeting with the Bank official and no waiting in the queue.  Just fill up your particulars in a form and submit through a click …you are done.

You can open a Personal Account or a Business Account and operate the same from wherever you are in the world.  PayPal takes all the precautions to keep your privacy as a closely guarded secret. It often advises its customers not to reveal your password even to PayPal staff.

Because of its hassle-free operations, both for depositing and withdrawing money online, millions of netizens have placed their trust on Paypal.  Ironically, the Indian Banks, though bragging of “computerization” of their accounts and induce their customers to engage in “net banking”, do not recognize Paypal. Many of their staff does not even know what is “Paypal”.

However for Indians who have been hitherto Paypal customers, there was no problem in either depositing or withdrawing money. Yes – there were delays in transacting the withdrawal requests – from 6 to 8 days – which Paypal themselves are plainly informing right at that time, when you make the request.

Considering the size of Paypal customer community and comparing the service of Banks in India, the Indian customers could not grumble.  But to the surprise of everyone, Paypal has admitted that they have some problems in processing bank transfers of money of late.

Here is the advice received from Paypal in respect of a withdrawal request for money from an Indian customer:

“Thank you for contacting PayPal.

We are currently experiencing an issue processing bank transfers to India bank accounts.  As a result there may be some delays in both withdrawals and random deposits.

We are doing everything we can to process your withdrawal as soon as possible; however, we do not have a specific timeframe to share at this time.

I know that this is somehow inconvenient on your end; I assure you though that your money will still post to your bank account and we are sorry for any inconvenience.

I’ll be glad to hear from you if you need clarification. You can also
visit www.PayPal.com/101. Thank you for choosing PayPal for your online payment needs. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Elma
PayPal, an eBay Company”

It is a moot point whether the “problem” is with the attitude of Indian Banks or whether PayPal is seriously ridden with a crisis. Whatever it is the customer is the ultimate sufferer.  We can only wish PayPal crosses over this crisis very quickly to regain the unassailable confidence reposed by their world-wide customers, which includes the “already suffering”  Indians.