When Rukky Kofi finally landed herself an online job that would see her earning $1,000 monthly, she must have been elated. But nothing prepared her for equal levels of disappointment when the time came to setup her work info.
"I found out that the company makes payments only via PayPal and at the moment, Nigerians cannot receive payments with their PayPal accounts."
After many years of ignoring the country, PayPal finally came to Nigeria about 2 years ago, albeit with limitations that dampened the initital excitement — users could only send out payments, not receive. Nigeria has since grown to become PayPal's second biggest market in Africa yet, the online payment company has seen no reason to open up payments channels into the country.
Rukky Kofi, like many other Nigerians who conduct business online, thinks this is unfair.
"Nigeria is a country filled with a lot of poor people (by global standards) with very limited opportunities hence the need to seek opportunities to make a living online. A job that pays $1000 a month is enough to make you a happy Nigerian and this sort of job is not exactly easy to find in the country."
So she decided to do something about it. She put up a petition on Change.org. So far, the petition has 20 supporters (as of this publication) out of the 100 500 it needs to get PayPal's attention. According to the Rukky:
"The goal of this petition is to urge Paypal to re-access the situation. There's a really vast market of Nigerians who will happily subscribe to Paypal's services once we are able to receive payments and manage business accounts. At the moment, a lot of qualified, hard working Nigerians can't make money online simply because they can't receive payments via Paypal. These are individuals who have been offered project and job contracts that they can't take advantage of because they can't receive their pay using Nigerian Paypal accounts."
This is not the first time anyone will be petitioning PayPal from Nigeria. I remember just 2 years ago, a web design company actually petitioned PayPal to come to Nigeria. PayPal's Nigeria entry followed barely a month after, either by coincidence or as a result of the petition. Hopefully due to the latter.
What do you think? Should PayPal allow Nigerians receive money with their accounts? Would you be open to signing the petition? Please share your views in the comment section below.
Photo Credit: lukas.b0 via Compfight cc
