PayPal Expands Payment Services to Help Ukrainian Citizens, Refugees

PayPal expanded its services to allow Ukrainian citizens and refugees to receive payments from overseas. Ukrainians will now be able to transfer funds from their PayPal accounts to eligible credit and debit cards. PayPal’s CEO Dan Schulman said, in a letter yesterday the company had also waived its fees on such transactions until June 30. More than 3 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the invasion by Russia.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov have been actively reaching out to many tech companies, asking them to help Ukraine and cut off services to Russia. According to a letter he posted to Twitter, he had reached out to PayPal asking them to expand services in the country before the company made the change.

PayPal services are freely available to Ukrainians

Peer-to-peer payments expansion

PayPal is expanding upon its existing money transfer services. The company is enabling Ukrainian PayPal account holders to send and receive peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in four currencies– USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR.

Waiving fees

PayPal is waiving its own fees until June 30 for customers sending funds to Ukrainian PayPal accounts or receiving funds into Ukrainian PayPal accounts. Additionally, PayPal’s international remittance service, Xoom, is waiving transaction fees sent to recipients in Ukraine.

Funds transfers

PayPal will allow Ukrainian account holders to transfer funds from their Ukrainian PayPal Wallet to an eligible Mastercard or Visa debit or credit card. Once the transfer has taken place, the money will be available in the currency associated with the payment card. Citizens who have fled the country will also be able to access these features if they set up a Ukrainian PayPal account. The company says Ukrainians will be able to send and receive funds in US and Canadian dollars, as well as British pounds and Euros. (Ukraine’s official currency is the hryvnia.)

PayPal earlier shut down its services in Russia earlier this month, joining many financial giants like Visa and Mastercard in suspending operations thereafter its invasion of Ukraine. PayPal notes that the changes, including the removal of fees, are for a limited time — they’re currently slated to be in effect only until June 30th, 2022. But since the situation is “developing,” PayPal says it is reserving the right to make any changes but will post notices to its site if or when it does.

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Megha Gupta

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