Payment
PayPal for the Philippines: Use EON, But Not Fresh
First, the bad news: seems cards need a transaction history before working with PayPal. That means fresh cards won’t work.
Now, the good news: seems after building that transaction history, UnionBank EON Visa Electron debit cards can receive money from PayPal. Since the Philippines is still a cash-based economy, debit cards are often more useful here than credit cards.
I’m getting my EON card soon, but it looks like I’ll have to buy some stuff before withdrawing my PayPal funds to it. One shopping spree is a small price to pay for access to revenue streams that pay exclusively through PayPal. If other banks don’t act fast, UnionBank might quickly secure a monopoly on PayPal funds newly flowing into the Philippines.
PayPal Sends Money to the Philippines!
Oh my God. This is the gamechanger. Philippine PayPal users can now receive money.
Let that sink in for a second. Rural Filipinos can now sell their towns’ products directly to the world over eBay. Talented Filipina babes can become the next Happy Slip by posting their videos on Revver. The Philippines — indeed, individual Filipinos — can finally earn money in the global Long Tail of ecommerce.
My mind is now racing with the possibilities for my fellow Filipinos. For years, the government has talked big about globally empowering Filipinos through ecommerce. Guess what: the power is here.
Now the task is to show people how to use that power. Filipinos are so used to the oppression of the middleman that they’ll have to learn how to live with disintermediation.
I want to name so many more sites where Filipinos can make money through PayPal, but I can’t. I know they’re out there, in the thousands. I just haven’t kept track of them. We’ve lived without PayPal for so long, we’ve ignored all PayPal revenue sources. We all have to get used to the light after years in the darkness.
(Via John Cuneta.)
