Paypal is a huge payment platform on the internet mostly accepted by online merchants like Amazon and Ebay. For freelance developers or those that wish to make money online, Paypal is one of the preferred modes of payment apart from Visa credit and debit cards. There’s one problem though — you can’t receive Paypal payments in Uganda and in most African countries except Nigeria and South Africa.
Using Payoneer
Payoneer apparently is the most convenient way of receiving Paypal payments in Uganda or any other African countries where Paypal withdraws are not supported. Payoneer is an international money transfer service. When you signup for Payoneer, you’ll receive a Payoneer mastercard. You then link your Paypal account with your Payoneer mastercard to receive Paypal payments. Once the funds hit your Payoneer account, you can then withdraw the money from any Mastercard supported ATM machine in your country.
Sign up for a Payoneer account to start receiving Paypal and other global payments here.
E-pay Kenya
Epay Kenya is yet another way you could get paid through Paypal or Skrill. Even though based in Kenya, according to Ugandan freelancer, they also can help us those in Uganda. At the time of this writing we failed to get their contact information for confirmation of that. When I tried to use E-pay, it seems they use Payoneer as their backend service provider to process payments.
Traditional Banks
Most banks in Uganda don’t support Paypal unfortunately. Only a handful of banks do support payments receiving payments in from Paypal. Equity bank Kenya accepts withdraw of Paypal funds in Kenya but we are yet to confirm if the Ugandan-branch accepts that too.
@oquidave @prepaid_africa check with @KeEquityBank Uganda. The only bank accepting withdrawal of paypal in Kenya
— #ImpactWoman254 (@irenesconcierge) January 15, 2016
Alternatively instead of being paid through Paypal, you could explore other means of receiving payments in Uganda. Bitcoin is gaining popularity of recent and it could be one of the options you could consider.
@oquidave there is! Ask for for the Bitcoin equivalent and use @BitPesa in Uganda to convert to you mobile money @prepaid_africa
— Michael Kimani (@pesa_africa) January 15, 2016
You can also look at providers such as remit.ug, worldremit and the usual players money gram and western union if you don’t wish to go through the Paypal hassle.
Image: ufindthem.com