Many Zimbabweans don’t buy the story that sanctions against Zimbabwe affect everyone, that is until they attempt to use PayPal with a Zimbabwean credit card. Only then do they suddenly become enraged and start spewing the kind of political rhetoric and conspiracy theories reserved for your favorite Sunday newspaper‘s opinion column. In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, PayPal will NOT process your payment if you are using a debit card or credit card registered in Zimbabwe. The reason? Sanctions.
In the past, Paypal has been more upfront about this. Once, they made their entire website inaccessible from Zimbabwe, save for a notice citing sanctions as the reason for the blackout. Today it’s different, the PayPal website is now accessible from Zimbabwe, but just to look at, because you still can’t use a Zimbabwean credit card on PayPal.
Without the sanctions notice, I guess PayPal can now play it off as some kind of technical issue right? Well yes, except for the fact that all you needed to do to fix this glitch was change your Zimbabwean address to another address from any other country, and voilà your card would work. PayPal has since upgraded the “glitch” making it impossible to use a card from Zimbabwe, period! Having had enough of these sanctions, I decided to do what any responsible angry adult does, I took to Twitter.
@AskPayPal Why doesn’t Paypal work with Zimbabwean Visa Cards for every Zimbabwean in Zimbabwe? Sanctions Maybe? What a big shame
— Taf Makura (@tafmakura) January 9, 2014
10 hours later PayPal responded to my tweet. Apparently, they have nothing but regret. Really?
@tafmakura We appreciate your interest in using PayPal and regret that our services aren’t available in your country at the time ^TE
— Ask PayPal (@AskPayPal) January 10, 2014
Did they just copy and paste this response from a template somewhere? Well at least this is PayPal’s first public statement on the issue. But I wasn’t done yet. I decided to be direct this time.
@AskPayPal When is Paypal coming to Zimbabwe?
— Taf Makura (@tafmakura) January 10, 2014
Nothing. No response. It seems ^TE from PayPal had nothing more to say to this sanctioned individual.
UPDATE: Paypal finally responded to my last tweet in the typical P.R. fashion of a big condescending corporation. “We don’t have an exact timeframe on the expansion of our services to new regions, but we’re working hard to get there” they then put a little 🙂 at the end. Are they mocking me?
@tafmakura We don’t have an exact timeframe on the expansion of our services to new regions, but we’re working hard to get there 🙂 ^SC
— Ask PayPal (@AskPayPal) January 10, 2014
While the Pay Pal response is immaterial at best, they deserve some credit for responding to my queries, it should be worth something, right? Maybe. To be fair, there are some unsanctioned countries like Nigeria that also have similar Pay Pal restrictions imposed on them. Could it really be a technical, legal, or logistical issue and not sanctions after all. Who knows? Pay Pal could be doing everything they can to include more nations onto the platform without exposing their system to fraud or legal challenges. Remember BBM?
That said, It’s really not comforting to know that our predicament is one that we share with countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korea. To put things into perspective, even Somalia is Paypal ready. Oh well, Here is a sanctions-busting alternative way to access Paypal from Zimbabwe.