PayPal was announced to go live in Nigeria at least 24 hours ago, but as at yesterday Nigeria was still missing from the list of countries on the signup form.
However, the PayPal homepage has been updated and anyone visiting PayPal from Nigeria will be redirected to the Nigeria-specific site – paypal.com/ng.
Clicking on the signup button defaults to Nigeria as the country/region. I successfully created an Individual Account this morning. However, I have been unable to verify my account for payments.
Verification usually involves entering either of your bank account or bank card details. PayPal wires you a token amount of money and then you have to give them feedback on the specific amount they wired. Or they charge your card a token amount and then revert it after confirmation.
It appears bank card verification is the only option available to Nigerians, as of this publication. However, some Nigerians have already expressed difficulties using this verification method. So far, I personally have been unable to verify my PayPal account as I have had 2 of my Naira Mastercards rejected by PayPal.
It would appear that while PayPal is finally here in Nigeria, the technicalities are not quite yet in place. You can open a PayPal account but you can’t make or receive payments.
Of course, these are possible isolated cases. So have you successfully created and verified a PayPal account from Nigeria? Please share your experience.
Photo Credit: Håkan Dahlström via Compfight cc
