Less than 12 months Paypal a Online Payment Gateway has changed its policy for Indian account holders several times… Leading to panic among the Freelance & Startup circles in India… Almost 90% of Freelancers & Startups use Paypal as the mode of getting payments from clients… A week back all Paypal users from India has got an email which has restricted many of its services to align with RBI’s guidelines… Though PayPal has lot of options; Reserve Bank of India must also relax its policies for the benefit of millions of freelancers & startup who bring sizable sum of money into the economy…

Here is a freelancer who has sent an email to all open forums to gather support to send a request to RBI Governor… So for all freelancers and startups who use Paypal can join hands with Naresh to showcase our concerns…

From: Nitin Naresh <naresh.nitin@gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, February 5, 2011 12:04:44 PM
Subject: Letter to the Governer of RBI for Paypal Issues

This email is sent to the Start-Ups in order to seek support and coordination and file a petition against RBI decisions jointly.

Respected Sir

My name is Nitin Naresh and I am a resident of New Delhi, India which is the state capital of Constitution of India.

I work as a freelancer and outsource web-developement project and online projects from other countries which are located in Continents of America, Europe, Ocenia and many other asian countries.

I am a small level worker which works online and get paid by  my clients online using the web money transfer service known as paypal.

Recently I received a letter from paypal stating that as per RBI guidelines they are changing their services in India under which a user can not purchase any online product and service using paypal and will have to withdraw the payment into the bank accounts and also for export related services the maximum onetime transaction cost can not exceed more than 500 USD.

Now i want to ask some very simple, very basic questions along with my opinions and viewpoints on the questions and statements from all you highly educated, highly intelligent and think tanks who are known as beurocrats of India and who runs the India with their high intelligence and thoughts.

1. What do you think who runs India- People like TATA, Reliance, Birla or Small entreprenuers and mid scale Industries??

In my opinion its small scale industries and not bilionaires in India also known as punji-pati.

Right now (6:02 PM, 29-january 2011) the population of India is 1,19,60,605,63 and out of which more than 58 percent comes under poverty line, 35 % are middle income group, 5 % are tribal and only 3 percent are known as millionaries or billionaries.

So basically the majority of earning people are 35 % which earns their livelihood by various works some work under government department, some work in private sector, some work indiually or also know as self employed and some are professionals.

Out of these 35 percent people more than 28% works in small or medium private department where most of the work is outsourced from other countries which lies in other continents.

The only way to send and receive payment quickly is online money transfer which are like paypal.

Have you ever though that your such kind of irresponsible decisions, guidelines and directives can really affect the business in India.

In the world of Globalization, you are cutting the hands of earning people.

2. Do RBI has records of any money deposited by politicians, beurocrates, billionaries in Swiss Banks??? What steps RBI has taken to ensure that this money which belongs to us should come back to India.

It has been made clear by wikileaks and also many swiss banks officials that there is a huge some of black money in most of the swiss banks which belongs to Indians and are never taken care of.

Why RBI has not taken any step to bring that money back to India, Here I would specially like to mention that this money is all sort of black money which is earned by scams done by our well wisher politicians, beurocrates and many high level government officials.

Why RBI again do not take action on these people, why goverment is silent, why CBI is silent and why there is no case again these people who are the owener of this money.

Why government of India always ruin the happy life of common middle class man.

3. What is the job prospects in India and what is the ratio of people getting good jobs in India.

As per the world bank survey- our job ratio in India is only 1 out of 10. It means if every year 1 crore students pass their college and complete their education, only 1 lakh will get the jobs that too in private sectors, if they want to get jobs in government sector they will have to pay a huge some as bribe to the officials or they must have very high approach.

and rest of the people like us works out something and do work online or in companies which work online for clients based out of India and get paid online. Have you ever though that what impact your guidelines will have on their life.

4. RBI claims that this is done to ensure that there is no money laundring in India and also to stop criminal activities.

Here I would like to mention few points—

Before giving any such claims, I would like to request you to kindly learn and understand how paypal works. Paypal charge the credit cards of the sender and money is withdrawn in the receiver bank account. Now in both the cases a terrorist can not be a credit card holder or a bank account holder as most of the banks verify the details before offering the credit cards and also at the time of opening the bank account. If he still owns the bank account or a credit card then its the lack of verificaion of the bank or a credit card issuing company and not paypal.

More over its the duty of the police, CBI to ensure that there are no terrorist activities in India and thats why we are paying 40% of our taxes which goes as salary of police and other law enforcement agencies.

Just because our police and law enforcement agencies are not able to work properly, RBI can not cut the throat of 35% Indians.

Paypal Also stated that with the money users can not buy any services or products online. In the world of digitizatio where most of the people want to have their business online how can RBI block such services.

How can you stop people from buying the services online- have you ever thought how Indians will buy domains, hosting, online products. There is no shop in India which sells hosting and domains per KG.

Do you think people will buy guns and bombs online and will start terrorist activities?? Are you aware of any shop that sells  guns, bombs, weapons online??

There are 10 times more paypal users in america, uk, germany, austria, france and many other american and european nations as compared to India- does it mean those countries  have more number of terrorist in their boundries, there is more money laundring. I would like to tell you that these nations are much much more peacefull than India.

Here I would also like to specially remind you about the september 11 attack on america- after that attack there were no further attacks on USA, even a single cracker never burst in america after that, their security system became very tight and they learnt from their mistakes.

Paypal is an american company- if their goverment also starts thinking like RBI thinks or works, I guess they will have to block paypal and would have to throw paypal company out of their country. ISnt it??

You people are intelligent, well educated, litterate- please do not act as uneducated, illeterate labour class people. You must think logically and have a entrepreneurship vision in order to calculate aftermaths of your stupid decisions. You people run India, Your one decision can change the way India work, have you ever tried to calculate after math of your decision on the common Indian man.

5. I would like to ask RBI and Indian government officials that how many entreprenuership grants RBI and our Indian government has given to startups and entreprenuers in the past 5 years. What was their ratio and percentage.

In my opinion it was only 2-3%, what about rest 98% Indian citizens, do you think rest should not work, if we are working ourself anyhow and earning our bread and butter and standing on our feet- why RBI is trying to cut our roots and make us fed up of this country, its government and settle in some other nations to start our business.

6. what is the percentage or ratio of people in India that owns credit card- Only 4-5 percent.

In other nations more than 65% people owns credit card and can make their purchase online but in India we are only left with the option to use paypal like services if we want to buy something online. Why do RBI want to stop the business?

I remind of an instance that in 1984 there was a leakage of MIC gas in bhopal- People were asked to find the point of leakage  to stop the leakage and were not asked to stop breating to prevent poision entering into the body.

And our government is asking us to stop breathing instead of checking the source of terrorist activities. Mere blocking of service will not ensure 100% peacefull countries, terrorist will still transfer funds by many ways, but what will happen to common man. Have you ever though about this?

Finally I would only like to request you that instead of blocking the services under the fear of money laundring and terrorist activities RBI must ensure that the law enforcement agencies of our country are well versed and active, they must work fast and should be more alert.

I am a part of many entreprenuers group which discuss and share their experiences and problems of doing business in India and this problems is not just my problem, this problem is the problem of every individual who have online business setups out of India.

Please think globally and logically and act locally.

regards

Nitin Naresh