PayPal suspends payment transaction in India

PayPal is an online payment and money-transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. PayPal Inc has suddenly started blocking personal transactions to and from India. PayPal, in a weekend blog post on the company website, said the operations were on hold "while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service." Strangely, it has offered no justification for this decision. Funds requested through PayPal India are being reversed to their senders, and users have no access to them. It added that customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in rupees to local Indian banks. Payments to and from PayPal to its account users in India may also involve the foreign exchange maintenance act (FEMA) that has been under a cloud over the black money issue. Although PayPal provides money transfer service to and from India, neither the company nor its account holders pay any tax on the transaction. RBI is not responding to it saying ‘We have no idea why this is happening. PayPal doesn’t come under RBI’s purview’. The question is then how can the country receive money, in foreign currencies, without any accountability and supervision? Some sources say as the Indian government is aggravated at some perceived revenue loss; it might have put pressure on PayPal to stop the payments either directly or indirectly.” However this move from PayPal has left thousands of its Indian users high and dry and they are forced to search for an alternative payment service.