It’s been a big week for the South African internet economy. First MWEB started a broadband price war with their uncapped ADSL offering and now Pay Pal and FNB have announced that they’ve entered into an agreement to bring Pay Pal to South Africa. This enables South Africans to sell to PayPal‘s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)
This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.
Michael Jordaan, FNB‘s Chief Executive Officer had this to say –
“œWe are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as South Africans will be able to join the global eCommerce marketplace. Our agreement with PayPal also enables international businesses and individuals to transact with South African service providers via a secure and convenient payment gateway“
Pay Pal concluded –
“œFNB and PayPal have a similar focus on innovation, so it makes sense that we would work with FNB to make online payments even easier for merchants and consumers in South Africa,“ said Oded Zehavi, head of PayPal‘s business in Israel and South Africa.
FNB Customers can simply open a PayPal account and link it to a qualified FNB account and receive PayPal payments in 21 different currencies. FNB will convert the currency to South African Rand, when the money is transferred into their accounts.
Twitter is buzzing with the news.
