David Marcus, president at PayPal, and William Ready, co-CEO at Braintree. Image courtesy of PayPal.
A petition has been launched on Change.org asking PayPal to bring its online payment service to Nigeria by Lagos-based design company CreativityKills.
The petition, which at the time of going to press had 88 supporters, said, though being citizens of the country with the largest economy in Africa, Nigerians that want to take part in online transactions cannot fully use PayPal, which is the only payment method accepted on some websites.
“This has become a source of frustration for us the legit people who want to carry out e-commerce online but have no access to this feature. Some have defaulted to hoodwinking the PayPal system via proxies, we don’t want to anymore!” the petitioner said.
“We have the right to carry out online transactions as much as any other country in the world. Granted, Nigeria is known for internet fraud, but not everyone in Nigeria is a fraud. There are people like us who are talented web developers and gurus. I don’t see why we have to suffer for other peoples actions.”
To commence operations in Nigeria, the petitioner said PayPal can partner with companies such as Interswitch that are already in the Nigerian market.
“PayPal could easily partner with existing companies like Interswitch which has been carrying out transactions online without any problems; instead they have chosen to ignore us totally as if we are not a country. We wouldn’t even mind having to verify identity via international passports or something.”
