PayPal add 10 new countries including Nigeria

PayPal are adding ten new countries to the roster of territories they do business in, including what was once considered the online financial fraud centre of the world with their 419 scams – Nigeria.

From this week you’ll be able to use PayPal in Belarus, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Nigeria, Paraguay, and Zimbabwe.

It would be wrong to simply focus on the negatives however, on the plus side there’s way over a quarter of a billion potential new PayPal users coming on board, and some, like the potential 37,000 odd in Monaco, have some serious money to spend online.

Indeed to start with in these new countries PayPal users will only have the ability to send money, we don’t yet have a date when PayPal might allow them to accept money, at which point the new 180 days to open a dispute should offer you plenty of protection (but might end up costing PayPal a packet!)

“While technology is breaking down barriers to global commerce, many people are wary of entering their credit or debit card details on the website of an unknown seller, operating in a distant country,” said Rupert Keeley, senior vice president of PayPal Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Paying with PayPal provides peace of mind, because people never have to expose their financial information during the transaction.”

PayPal services will roll out across the ten new markets in the coming days. Once live, anyone with access to the Internet and a card authorized for Internet transactions by the issuing bank, will be able to register for a PayPal account and start making payments.

The addition of these markets will bring the total number of markets PayPal serves to 203.