Ideal PayPal Alternatives for Pakistan

Paypal is not offered in Pakistan yet, but does that mean you should lose hope and sit in the corner silently? Never! There are many alternatives and you can still make your way to the top without PayPal’s help. PayPal is the world’s favorite payment system. It offers it services in many countries but sadly, Pakistan is not one of them. This hurts many Pakistanis, especially the ones working in IT industry.
Mainly, there are three types of professionals who feel deprived when PayPal doesn’t offer its services in Pakistan. They are freelancers, bloggers and e-commerce businessmen. Today we will be describing solutions for all those professionals.

Understanding the Problem

In technical terms, there are many many alternatives to PayPal, but in practical terms, almost none of them work. Let me elaborate. There are payment services like Payza (formerly called AlertPay) that work in exactly the same fashion as PayPal does, but the problem is that freelance websites, internet merchants and advertisement publishers don’t support it. So today we will be sharing the solutions that are practical in Pakistan’s perspective. The solutions that actually work in Pakistan.

Payment Solutions for Pakistanis

There are people like Faisal Khan, who writes a well-reasoned letter to PayPal’s president each year and try to bring PayPal to Pakistan, and Asad Umar who moved a bill in the parliament persuading the government to bring PayPal to Pakistan. Sooner or later they will succeed but we can’t just sit back until they do. So we will work with alternatives at the moment. Let’s begin with freelancers, then we’ll move on to bloggers and e-Commerce business owners. Most of the Pakistani freelancers work with websites such as Elance, 99Designs, oDesk and Freelancer.com. They all have different payment solutions, and we are listing the ones that work in Pakistan. Skrill Skrill, which was formerly called Moneybookers, is supported by all of the websites mentioned above. Now Skrill does charge a little more than PayPal, but at least it is available in Pakistan.
This is the world’s second most trusted payment system after PayPal; so you don’t have to worry at all about security of your payment, your money is in safe hands.

Wire Transfer and LFT

International bank to bank transfer is called wire transfer. In this case, your earnings are transferred from the account of your freelance website, which is located overseas, to your account in Pakistan. The transfer can take from one week to 15 days. The transaction charges are around $30. So you should only make your transfer if you have a payout of at least $200 worth.
Some freelance websites such as oDesk have come up with a better solutions. LFT or local funds transfer. What happened is that Pakistani freelancers make a large portion of total freelance user-base in the world. Pakistani freelancers are ranked fifth on oDesk and third on Freelancer.com so these companies thought they should open a local account, and transfer the money from within the country. LFT is a great choice if your freelance website offers it. You get the money within a day or two, and the transaction charges are lowest. Now let’s move to the realm of blogging.

Solutions for Bloggers

Most of the advertisement publishers, such as Google Adsense, don’t support Skrill. They definitely don’t support LFT because there aren’t many Pakistani bloggers around. The good thing is that Google Adsense supports Western Union so the bloggers withdraw their payments from over there. Western Union does offer much better transfer rates than wire transfer. Western Union Wire Transfer is second most used payment solution amongst Pakistan by bloggers. Many bloggers work with advertisement publishers besides Google Adsense. These ad publishers include BuySellAds and Tribal Fusion. They have to use wire transfer. Solutions for e-Commerce Businessmen As 3G boom has hit Pakistan, the opportunities in Pakistani e-commerce industry are limitless. But sometimes businesses don’t enter online market because there isn’t a safe online payment system available… actually there is one. Internet Merchant Account State bank of Pakistan allow commercial banks to open Internet Merchant Accounts where businesses can receive online payments, from within the country and internationally as well. CitiBank and UBL are already opening these accounts. Internet Merchant Accont Image: Hostway If you are a person thinking of starting an online shop, you should use this account. You can also link this account with services like 2Checkout so you can start accepting PayPal and Credit Card payments from all around the world. This way, you can start a business of global scale while staying in Pakistan. Conclusion LFT is good for freelancers. If your website does not support LFT, try Skrill. Bloggers and use wire transfer and western union and e-Commerce businessmen should use internet merchandise account. If you need any kind of help/advice, please don’t hesitate to comment. And if you liked the post, don’t forget to share it on your Facebook or twitter account. Did you like the post? Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for latest updates Similar Stories E-commerce in Pakistan: what needs to be done? Online Fashion Shopping Trends and behaviors in Pakistan IT Minister urges to start E-commerce gateway in Pakistan‏ Say something on the topic!