The FINANCIAL — Popular e-commerce business PayPal is being strongly promoted by National Bank of Georgia and leading banks in Georgia via facebook.
The FINANCIAL — Popular e-commerce business PayPal is being strongly promoted by National Bank of Georgia and leading banks in Georgia via facebook. Georgia is in the list of the few countries where PayPal does not operate. Until now registering a PayPal account in Georgia was possible only with Procredit Bank credit cards indicating another country of operation instead of Georgia.
“I want PayPal service in Georgia” – this is a common slogan of the Georgian internet community. One such page was opened in May 2010 by Akaki Sanadze. It is now supported by National Bank of Georgia and two leading local banks: Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank. These banks actively started using facebook for their marketing campaigns in 2010. They have managed to attract more than 300,000 users to their facebook pages. Banks are willing to transfer such a critical mass to a different direction in order to support their business and boost sales.
If banks manage to accumulate more than 30,000 likes on facebook, there is high probability that the process will be sped up, campaign supporters believe. Currently the PayPal fan page supported by banks has up to 6,000 facebook likes.
National Bank of Georgia together with Bank of Georgia presented a 3 minute video about PayPal, a brief description of the service and asked for likes for its page on facebook.
On facebook one can also find two other pages of PayPal Georgia, both without likes however.
3,749 signatures in total were collected by the most popular online forum in Georgia forum.ge. Activists placed their petition on http://www.PetitionOnline.com/paypalge/petition.html, with 0 results though. Questions by representatives of Bank of Georgia which were placed on the official online forum of PayPal (http://paypaldev.org) in 2006 and in 2009 remain unanswered.
A special dedicated website www.paypalingeorgia.com was opened by another activist who published an open letter to the President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and Minister of Economy Vera Kobalia on behalf of the “internet community and supporters of PayPal”. The author demanded involvement of the Government in solving the issues with PayPal.
As is obvious from the recent campaign of National Bank of Georgia, attempts of activists are more productive now. Early this year the Government of Georgia said it is finalizing negotiations with PayPal.
According to the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, there are ongoing negotiations with PayPal and the service will be available in Georgia in the fourth quarter of 2011. It’s up to the company to decide whether to enter the country or not.
PayPal is a faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account. The service is available in 190 countries throughout the world, it has 164 million registered users, and transactions are available in 17 national currencies. PayPal has been under the ownership of eBay since 2002.
There are several advantages that PayPal has, such as high safety and simplicity of the system. Operations with PayPal can be held without sharing card information, providing guarantee of information confidentiality.
There are three steps while using PayPal. The customer sends a payment from his PayPal account and the seller receives the amount without any risks. The seller has the choice of whether to save the received amount on their PayPal account or transfer the received amount to their bank account.
“Payment systems and legislation are pretty well developed in Georgia compared to in other countries in the region. However despite this PayPal service is not available in Georgia,” said Giorgi Melashvili, Executive Director of National Bank of Georgia.
“We are actively engaged in the process of bringing PayPal to Georgia, in both direct and indirect ways,” Melashvili added.
However an important fact to note is that clients of ProCredit Bank Georgia do have the chance to use PayPal service via Visa Classic. Individuals must while registering though indicate a country other than Georgia, such as Armenia or Azerbaijan.
To the question “Does TBC Bank plan to form an agreement with online payment system like PayPal?” Mr. Vakhtang Butskhrikidze, General Director of TBC Bank replied – “Firstly, the Government should switch to the system. As soon as this happens, we will be switched to the system also.”
Interest in having PayPal in Georgia goes back 7-8 years, when while surfing the internet you would find different individuals requesting how to get on to the system from the Republic of Georgia and even requesting the country to be switched to the system.
Unfortunately a boom of internet shopping in Georgia failed due to still undeveloped e-commerce transactions, high custom TAX cost and poor post service.
Banking charges vary from 2.5-4% on transactions via Visa and MasterCard of Cartu Bank and Visa of Liberty Bank.
The case depends on how expensive the charges will be if PayPal enters Georgia and how will it affect banks’ debit and credit card accounts as well as transactions?
PayPal is the second in a series of digital campaigns of the Georgian Government. The first claim, demanding placing Georgia on Google-Map has not yet achieved success. Despite long negotiations with Google Georgia is still seen as white, unpopulated territory on the popular digital map.
However many still remain optimistic that with active campaigns by Georgian banks and the involvement of the Government, Paypal may one day soon be available in Georgia.
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