Paypal recently announced their inclusion of 10 other countries into their service.
Nigeria, as well as some other sub Saharan countries and countries in Latin America.

Social media went agog with the News, Nigerians screaming for joy.
But most failed to read the blue print.

As an online marketing coach/consultant having worked in the
tranches of online payment…I had to whip up this article
to educate you on the implications of this, and cause you to see more perspectives to this.

With this development, For me I choose to say, this is not
such a good news… am not Dancing for Joy and am not sad as a mourner either.

What should you know before you go jumping for Joy.
As a business owner, prepare yourself and as a user be harmed!

Here are my Seven reasons OR MAYBE THREE because I intend to make this short:

Number one and the biggest reason: Paypal only allows you to pay for services with PayPal and not open a merchant account. Again, I stress
You can only pay for services with those using Paypal as a merchant solution.

This means that Paypal still limits merchant account ownership to the same folks and countries and what they've only opened up for us is to have a Paypal account where we can spend more money with those folks. In other words Paypal is interested in boosting the marketplace opportunities for their vendors which we know isn't in Nigeria.

Now we know that the greatest need for Nigerians is to have a unified,
globally recognized mode of accepting payment on their site. That’s the
real deal. Where you can install a simple payment page on your site and
receive payments from anyone, anywhere in a safe and trusted platform.
That’s what we has online marketers have been looking forward to.

Paypal didn't hear your cry, Paypal heard the cries of their already existing merchants who lose sales opportunities and experience shopping cart dump because a growing percentage of their customers couldn’t pay with PayPal.

What’s the flip side of that. Nigerian merchants who have earned a business taking the opportunity of Paypal not accepting Nigerians legally are in for a stiff competition.
eCommerce within Nigeria global competitions have dramatically increased.

People are already eager to register so they can buy stuff from ebay, etc…. tell me where do you put the Konga’s and Jumia’s and the Taafoos not to mention the small eCommerce sites springing up in Naija!
We know online eCommerce… can be a wild jungle…

I can choose to buy from any merchant whether home or abroad… but buying abroad seems to appeal more… don’t you think.

So in simple sentence… More money/profit and market place opportunities for Americans, Europeans and more competition for LOCAL MERCHANTS…. (BLAH!)

Number 2: Paypal gives their subscribers a comparatively hard time.
They close accounts at will. Block payouts whenever they feel like. Change their
policies at the whim. check out this post http://snip.ly/NQY from Forbes that sheds more light on that.

{to read the post on Forbes click on this link http://snip.ly/NQY

Number 3: Paypal is facing crisis… You may not know that because our interest wasn’t in that angle. Afterall what do we care about a company we are not involved with. But lately, Paypal has been facing both internal crisis and external competitive fierceness.

Competition is already swallowing up their pie in the markets they already serve.

Google wallet, Dwolla, Mastercard and VisaCard, springing up their payments, Sellz, Stripe, Gumroad, Big Names… Not so Big names are cashing out on Paypal weaknesses and providing users with
better services and their only way out of that mess is to launch in markets they’ve deliberately ignored for over 19 years…

So if this is the best idea PayPal could cook up after 19 years which is to
to extend their offerings to unserved markets not for the economic growth of business owners in dire need of a reliable global service but rather to
milk the over $100 billion markets of Africa and Latin America put together, for crying out loud If this was April Fools DAY, PAYPAL THE JOKE IS ON US!

(WATCH OUT FOR THE FULL SEVEN REVIEWS OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF PAYPAL AND WHAT YOU MUST KNOW
ON MY ONLINE WEBSHOW AT Youtube.com/user/marketingkisspr)

Illoh Ifeoma

“Your online marketing Krac Nut”
{I help entrepreneurs leverage online marketing and digital PR channels to grow their business and boost profit.}