The FINANCIAL — A global e-commerce business, PayPal, allowing payments and money transfers through the internet, enters Georgian market.
Damien Perillat, Director Central and Eastern Europe at PayPal will make official announcement for media on April 15th in Tbilisi. Meanwhile National Bank of Georgia and Association of Banks of Georgia told The FINANCIAL they have no information regarding the entrance of the leading e-commerce business to Georgia. It seems PayPal entrance turns to be a great surprise for all leading Georgian banks.
Until now Georgia is in the list of the few countries where PayPal does not operate.
In December 2010 officials at Ministry of Economy said negotiations with California based company was started and the service will be available in 2012. National bank of Georgia gives its official explanation on official website: “PayPal is not operating in all countries. Decision about entering new country is made by company’s management based on its commercial interests. PayPal expands participating countries base periodically and the expansion is undertaken with group of countries, rather a single one. Currently Georgia is not a member of PayPal service but it can become participant during future expansions”.
None of the leading Georgian banks confirmed their cooperation with PayPal. The FINANCIAL contacted Bank of Georgia, Bank Republic.
PayPal 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.
“PayPal is not operating in all countries. Decision about entering new country is made by company’s management based on its commercial interests. PayPal expands participating countries base periodically and the expansion is undertaken with group of countries, rather a single one,” said official from NBG.
PayPal has been strongly promoted by the Bank of Georgia and other leading banks in Georgia via facebook. 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 was a common slogan of the Georgian internet community. One such page was opened in May 2010 by Akaki Sanadze. Later it has been supported by National Bank of Georgia and two leading local banks: Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank.
If banks manage to accumulate more than 30,000 likes on facebook, there was high probability that the process would be sped up, campaign supporters believed. High number of facebook supporters did not encouraged PayPal to enter Georgia.
In Georgia Banking charges vary from 2.5-4% on transactions via Visa and MasterCard.
In her interview with The FINANCIAL, Svetlana Georbelidze, Visa Country Manager for Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova stated that that PayPal’s entrance will not have an influence on Visa’s activities in Georgia. “Visa cards are accepted at merchants at tens of millions of merchants in over 200 countries – both in the physical and virtual world. PayPal is one of the largest Visa merchants where Visa cards are accepted,” she said.
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