Bitcoin Forum

Many people probably don't know, but Ukraine was one of the few countries where PayPal never fully worked, as it was impossible to receive funds for Ukrainian accounts. This was a big obstacle for small businesses that wanted to sell something online and ship it to foreign countries. PayPal couldn't fully work, because Ukrainian regulators wanted to tax and regulate it more heavily than PayPal would accept.

Today, PayPal started fully working in Ukraine (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/paypal-enables-customers-to-send-money-to-ukrainians/2022/03/17/e2cc8bd4-a624-11ec-8628-3da4fa8f8714_story.html), providing people who are in Ukraine with additional channel for receiving aid from foreign countries or using it as payment instrument for doing business or making purchases from abroad.

This could mean that the adoption of crypto for payments with Ukraine will be lower than expected, because now there's another alternative to Visa/Mastercard, SWIFT, Western Union and other traditional fiat channels.

This does not change the fact that Ukraine did not officially legalize cryptocurrencies like bitcoin before, but they see the usefulness of these coins and know the need they have to legalize it. This does not also change the fact that bitcoin, cryptocurrencies are used to help Ukraine as donation from all over the world. This does not still also change the fact that if cryptocurrencies are not accepted for payment, some people will not be able to send the amount they are willing to send for help as they got no easy choice than to use cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies are not competing, they are alternatives which people will have no option than to use as they are seeing the value. PayPal yet has been existing before cryptocurrencies but yet cryptocurrencies are getting more recognition and more value, especially bitcoin.

In certain cases, they do. Imagine you are a Ukrianian, you have family members in the US who want to send you money, because you decided to stay at home instead of seeking refuge. Naturally, you will start looking for methods with the lowest fees to receive the most of the money. And PayPal is offering to do it with zero fees. And PayPal is one of the most popular financial services in the world. So now regular people have one more option that isn't crypto.

We saw a lot of donations to Ukraine, but I would guess that they come from crypto enthusiasts and not people who specifically bought crypto to donate it to Ukraine, because they decided it's the best method to send money to Ukraine. So, crypto adoption for payments/remittance is not growing as fast as some people might imagine.

That is rather curious, I always assumed that Ukraine would just be like any other country in Europe when it came to having Paypal. Glad to see that they've been given access to it and hopefully peace will come back to their country without any further Russian interference in their politics. It will be a very useful tool to help them rebuild in the long term, hopefully Paypal sweeten the deal even further and maybe knock down the fees they charge. It's going to take a huge effort to rebuild this country, as the Russian invasion has done untold damage to all sorts of civilian structures throughout the country, not to mention all the innocent people they've murdered in the process.

It will be the good news for the people in Ukraine.Really it will be the wanted one. Ukraine people was suffered a lot in the money perspective. Even they not begin the war, they was suffering a lot by the Russia. Russia was second largest GDP country. Their fear of NATO will target the Russia from Ukraine by the NATO countries.But my question is, why they not attack the poland in a past !! This paypal will increase flow of money in Ukraine.

I thought of PayPal working with most countries and never thought that they've been tough against Ukraine. But this is a good news for the citizens there.

Aside from crypto, they've got now PayPal on their back for transactions that they need to have.

They need many channels for money going in and out there to help their citizens and the government.

they need to look for alternatives here as much as possible. most of the physical financial institutions are destroyed or not operational during this war situation. so paypal is another good option for them in terms of faster financial transaction. because a lot more people will see it easier to manage as compared to crypto. more people across the globe are also using paypal services. another advantage of paypal over crypto.

I'm rather curious though, who gave in? Paypal for Ukraine's tax demands or Ukraine regulators? I have to agree though, with Paypal waiving the fees till the end of June, I don't think crypto will actually be able to fight over being the one used by their citizens. That is, unless, they're investors of sorts, which would naturally mean they'd have funds in crypto. Not to mention that Paypal would make the process much easier since I reckon most people know how to use it, unlike crypto.

Paypal is not working there in Ukraine while in my country works more than 10 years ago, I wonder why, Were they sanctioned?

Sad to see it only work today but how is this going to make a difference when people in Ukraine are more worried about shelling above them than signing an account.
I think Paypal could give a headstart if they really wanted to help they can give away funds for every Ukrainian that registers as Kraken did.

Well, I think that all the help that can reach people in need is good, no matter if it comes with paypal or crypto. You are probably right but there will be people who will have known about crypto in Ukraine because of the conflict, if only because they have heard that some of the help has come in crypto. If you used to see cryptocurrencies as something rare associated with fraud and scams but today you got help paid with crypto, surely tomorrow you are going to be more open minded towards them.

The road to mass adoption is slow, with a few small nudges, and this is one more small nudge.

Some years ago I've been visiting some ukrainian website and it had a huge "donate us via paypal" button, so they definitely had PayPal before. Maybe they had some restrictions on ukrainian accounts but they definetely had this channel for receiving crypto.

However, the biggest problem is to make supply chains work well in order to be able to deliver purchases. Money is not an issue at this case.

this is a good thing because then Ukraine will have other alternative payments.. but even if the adoption of crypto will slow down, surely in the future more people will use crypto in Ukraine, like in my country where previously not many people paid much attention to crypto, but in the end more and more people here use crypto for their investments or transactions

That's good news for Ukraine and Ukrainian people however I didn't know that PayPal was not working on Ukraine before, after this action people the payment can be easily done in Ukraine there are many donators from all over the world they can now send their donations for Ukrainian people and support them, considering this even for working PayPal in Ukraine bitcoin was doing the job and there were many payments done from all over the world from bitcoin, however, I'm surprised to see PayPal was not working Ukraine before.

The problem in Ukraine relates to withdrawing money from banks and updating balances, as I believe that the government has imposed certain withdrawal limits, Bitcoin is an additional option, but the Ukrainian people will definitely not depend on Bitcoin.

• We will be lucky if 1% of Ukrainians use Bitcoin to make payments.
• Paypal is more suitable for digital payments than buying from local stores.
• I don't think companies like Western Union will do well, they accept cash withdrawals which is dangerous for a country under bombardment.
• Purchasing with a visa will be the most convenient option, and making Paypal will facilitate that.

It is good for the people who stuck under crisis no matter either its PayPal or Bitcoin it has to help people with the transaction then only they can able to survive. Governments only allowed it because there is no other option and don't forget that PayPal also allows their customers to buy and sell bitcoin so it will help in the adoption in someway but users can't be able to transact their cryptocurrencies from one PayPal to another PayPal account.

Yes, it's also a good choice and PayPal has taken it too long before they get to have this confirmation from them to Ukraine.

It's a known service and they've been there before crypto has emerged. But this time, they've adopted crypto and at the same time, they've granted Ukraine and that's a good thing not just for the company but mostly to Ukraine.

It is not really that common for these type of companies to remove themselves from a nation as a whole. They make more money by having more users of it is possible for them then they would be working in every single nation. Which means that there must be some legal reasons why they didn't work there.

After all, if they could make all those profits from Ukrainians then why would they leave? They would want every single one of them to ditch any other processor and use paypal if they could. Whatever happened, it wasn't about the war, there must have been some legal loophole closed just to get paypal there as well to pace the recovery process for Ukraine.

PayPal was previously available to citizens of Ukraine, but there were restrictions on receiving money through this monetary system. Thus, it was previously possible to pay for the goods using PayPal, but it was impossible to make a withdrawal from a PayPal wallet to a Ukrainian debit card.

It should be added that since March 18, PayPal has blocked all wallets of Russian users for an indefinite period.

Paypal is a mess. High fees, chargebacks... It is a nightmare. Ukraine didn't lose anything by not using Paypal. Crypto has everything paypal is going to offer and more. (it is fast, it is cheap, no fcking chargebacks) Paypal is legacy tech and it is centralized. To be frank, the world would become a better place if paypal just disappears tomorrow.

Thanks for the additional clarification, because it was illogical for me that PP was not present before in Ukraine - and once upon a time it was the same in my country, you could pay for goods and services, but you could not withdraw funds to your bank account .


A logical move by a US-based company whose president has called the Russian president a war criminal - and most companies that hold on to their reputation will do the same. I watched yesterday and I can't believe my eyes, 100 000 Russians at the stadium are celebrating the occupation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine. As someone has already noticed, we seem to have got another North Korea, only much bigger and more dangerous.

I think the features of btc inside paypal are only limited to some countries and until now I have not seen this feature when I open my paypal account but maybe they can give exceptions to ukraine since the country have suffered from the war and they need special treatment right now.

When people open paypal they will be curious when they saw bitcoins inside it so they will try it but I hope this should not give them an impression that btc cant be used anywhere except from paypal. This only happens with paypal, they restrict the use of btc because they still prioritize their service. Tax should go down a little bit even though their economy is still broken yet.

I agree, but the cynical, evil little devil that lives between my ears just hates seeing big corporations take political stands, whether it's because they believe in a cause, or they're pressured by politicians, or they want to look good in the eyes of their shareholders and/or customers.  There's a part of me that wants the market to be truly free and not subject to the influence of man-made crises like the current one.

But then there's that other side of me that's cheering for PayPal and Ukraine (even though I can't stand PayPal).  Regardless of the reason for them providing their services to Ukrainians, it was a good thing to do.

this is good news for ukraine but even though paypal is officially operating in ukraine, I still hope that cryptocurrency will still find the best place in ukraine, don't let it be later in the future, the rules about crypto currency are complicated or even cryptocurrency is abandoned by ukraine LOL.

Expect the unexpected but actually this is really just a thing on where you could really presume to happen because traditional payment companies would neither make out some direct or immediate adoption or agreement

if the do wanted to which means that people would really be having that option now aside from UK common payment terms and now that Paypal is working out then it would really be easing out transactions even more.
Lets just accept that not all would really be that confident on using bitcoin or crypto on making transactions due to some limitations and other stuffs which having paypal would ease out those some issues or problems.