For over two decades, people across the globe have used PayPal to send and receive money online. In most parts of Africa, including Nigeria, the use of this online payment system began about a decade after it was fully in use in Tier 1 countries like the UK and the US. When Nigerians were allowed to open accounts with PayPal in 2014, only personal accounts which couldn’t receive money were permitted. However, as the years went by, some more restrictions have been eased. But the question is. Can a Nigerian PayPal account receive money? Read on to find out.
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Can a Nigerian PayPal Account Receive Money?
Yes, a Nigerian business PayPal account can receive money, however, a Nigerian personal PayPal account cannot receive money. The downside to this is PayPal doesn’t permit funds to be withdrawn into a local Nigerian bank account. This challenge is a nightmare for many freelancers, bloggers, website flippers, and eCommerce experts in Nigeria. Is there an alternative to this quagmire? Read on to find out.
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A Brief Overview of How Nigerians Started Using PayPal
PayPal has been in existence in the US for 24 years now, however, it took Nigerians writing a petition on change.org which was signed by 1507 people before the ban that prevented Nigerians from operating PayPal accounts was lifted in 2014. Lifting the ban did not remove every restriction, however. Nigerians could only operate a personal account at the time.
A Nigerian personal account allowed one to shop online on e-commerce sites where PayPal is recognized. But you couldn’t receive money with a personal account. This remained the same until 2018 or thereabout when Nigerians became able to operate a business account. With a Nigerian PayPal business account, it was possible to send money, receive money, send invoices, and request money.
To have a PayPal business account, one must be a freelancer or an entrepreneur who would use this online payment service to receive earnings from across the world. Still, the Nigerian PayPal business account did not permit withdrawals into a Nigerian local account. This means you could get your remittances into your Nigerian business account but won’t be able to get the money into your local bank account in Nigeria.
In light of this challenge, we’ve thought it wise to provide you with some tips to get funds received from PayPal into your pockets – literally. Read on.
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Tips to Receive Money From PayPal in Nigeria
Now we’ve been able to establish that the Nigerian business PayPal account has a limitation. Let’s talk about ways to get your remittances to your account in Nigeria. All the tips we’d be mentioning below are legit. You break no law if you do as we instruct.
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How to Get Money From PayPal Business Account Into Your Nigerian Bank Account through Verified Exchangers
Although the Nigerian PayPal business account cannot allow funds to be withdrawn into a Nigerian local bank account, the capability of sending funds from your balance to another PayPal wallet still exists. This is where exchangers come to play.
There are several Nigerian-verified PayPal exchangers to whom you can send your PayPal funds to their wallets, and upon confirmation of your funds, they credit your local account with the naira equivalent (based on the exchange rate both parties agree on ab initio). To avoid falling to scammers, ensure to perform your due diligence before you send your PayPal funds to any Nigerian PayPal exchanger.
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How to Receive Cryptocurrency Using Your PayPal Account and Exchange on Binance for Naira
PayPal has made it possible for users to activate cryptocurrency sessions on their PayPal and use the same to make payments to other PayPal users. Tell your clients to do so. He or she should activate their cryptocurrency session on PayPal and send the money to you via cryptocurrency.
When the cryptocurrency payment lands in your PayPal balance, head to Binance or KuCoin, and trade your received cryptocurrency using the P2P feature on those platforms. After a successful trade, you can use your Nigerian local account to receive the naira equivalent of the cryptocurrency you traded.
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How to Open a PayPal Account that Allows You to Withdraw Funds into a Local Account in Nigeria
Although a Nigerian PayPal business account does not permit funds to be withdrawn into a local bank account, there are some African countries that this restriction doesn’t affect. African countries like Senegal, Kenya, Egypt, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Algeria, and Morocco are permitted to withdraw PayPal funds into their local bank accounts. How then does this present an opportunity for Nigerians, you may wonder.
What to do is, use your Nigerian IP address to open a Kenyan or Senegalese (or any of the above-mentioned countries) version of PayPal. Proceed with the registration process the normal way. Provide all required information accurately and use your email address, phone number and government-issued document (preferably a Nigerian International passport) to verify the PayPal account.
If you choose to open a Kenyan version of PayPal with your Nigerian address, there are two withdrawal options you can use to withdraw PayPal funds into a local Kenyan bank account. One is the mPesa account while the other is a Kenyan UBA domiciliary account.
To get a mPesa account, you’ll need a Kenyan phone number. If you have a friend in Kenya, he or she can help you with a Kenyan phone number which will help you open a mPesa account. If you successfully opened a mPesa account, you can transfer funds from your Kenyan PayPal business account into the mPesa account, then use Chipper Cash to transfer the funds in the mPesa account into your Nigerian local account.
On the other hand, using a Kenyan UBA domiciliary account would require that you visit Kenya (or Senegal, if that’s your preference) before such an account can be activated. With that being done, you can send PayPal funds to the Kenyan UBA domiciliary account. The downside of this option is that you cannot transfer funds from your Kenyan UBA domiciliary account online. This means you have to physically withdraw the funds in-bank in Kenya (or wherever you may have opened a UBA dom account).
It’s not quite convenient to use the UBA dom account in other African countries since you’d need to physically withdraw the funds there. Instead, look for a trusted person in any of those countries where PayPal permits local withdrawals, and send funds to the local bank account of the person you have in that African country. The person would then send money into your Nigerian local bank account using international money transfer services.
You can also use the funds in your Nigerian PayPal business account to shop on eBay and other eCommerce sites where things are cheap, then ship those items to Nigeria, sell them, and get your money back, with profits, of course. If you can’t deal with these restrictions imposed on a Nigerian PayPal account, you can create a Payoneer account which you can use to receive money from anywhere in the world, then withdraw the funds into your Nigerian account easily.