PayPal, the world’s primary method of online payment as just announced it was stopping online domestic payments in Taiwan.
Today the online payment company issued a notice to its Taiwan customers announcing it was stopping domestic transactions in the Island. The company argued that this decision was made to comply with local laws and regulations.
PayPal announcement stated:
“Dear customers,
We’ll be streamlining our services in Taiwan, and our system will be enhanced to ensure that domestic commercial payments will not be processed, in compliance with local laws and regulations.
These changes will take effect from September 21, 2015, and you will not be able to use your PayPal account registered in Taiwan to send payments to, or receive payments from, other PayPal accounts registered in Taiwan. Please note that you will still be able to receive payments from international sales and trading, as well as make payments for purchases of goods or services from overseas merchants.
We sincerely apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. We will continue to enhance our platform and improve our services to serve your needs.”
Early this week, the online payment service announced it was stepping out of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican government issued a law that forces all peer-to-peer transactions to be taxable at a 2% rate. This decision was motivated by a Puerto Rican government attempt to impose capital controls.
Even though PayPal is stopping domestic payments, the company will still host international payments and support international trading in Taiwan.
Taiwan will be left with a lack of options to fulfill domestic payments, but this gap might motivate companies working with digital currencies to step up and fill the void left by PayPal.
Taiwanese citizens will have to find other options for their domestic online payments, and they might turn to bitcoin as a possible solution.
By filling the gap left by PayPal services, bitcoin might just become the online domestic payment killer app for Taiwanese people.