PayPal has been nothing short of a nightmare for Indian users. For the past several months, it has been a story of one step forward and two steps backward. After screwing Indian users over and over again, they announced a couple of helpful measures over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, PayPal’s latest move will all but undo whatever little goodwill it had managed to garner.
PayPal has been demanding PAN card numbers from all Indian users for a long time. Many users worked around this restriction by simply providing fake PAN card numbers as PayPal didn’t do any validation. However, beginning today, PayPal will be limiting accounts with invalid PAN numbers. Limited accounts will not be able to receive payments. However, they can still be used for sending payments and making online purchases using linked credit cards.
The trouble with PayPal’s latest move is that its verification system appears to be pretty dodgy. Two PCwin Zone staff members, including yours truly, have had their accounts limited in spite of furnishing correct PAN card numbers. Given PayPal’s long standing policy of shooting first and asking questions later, it’s not surprising that they chose to act without giving the account holders any opportunity to respond. Let’s just hope that they will get around to fixing this issue soon.