PayPal is opening up to all South African banks

A year and a half after launching in South Africa, exclusively with FNB, PayPal is opening up to all the other banks from today.

Until now South African PayPal users have only been able to withdraw their funds into linked FNB accounts, although linking it to any SA credit card allowed for payments to be made into PayPal.

PayPal's entrance has been a "major milestone for e-commerce in South Africa", FNB CEO Michael Jordaan said.

"Cross-border payments have always been one of the challenges for South African businesses to expand their e-commerce initiative globally.

"When we announced the PayPal service in 2010 there was a requirement for South Africans to have an FNB account. Although we can think of many reasons to switch to FNB, this may have discouraged some businesses."

Chris Savides, the general manager for FNB complementary online services, said the bank was very pleased with the response to PayPal.

"To date more than 20000 merchants and individuals have signed up for the service and our monthly payment volumes continue to grow at 8% month-on-month," said Savides, whose idea it was to bring the service to SA.

There are currently 500000 South African PayPal accounts, he said.

Oded Zehavi, PayPal regional director for Israel and South Africa, said he was impressed by the country's "high concentration of entrepreneurs".

"It's been inspiring for me to have conversations with people from Jo'burg to Cape Town and to hear about all the innovative ways they're building their businesses and using PayPal," said Zehavi.

"We're very happy with the acceptance among businesses, but even more so with the innovative ideas we've heard about how to make commerce and money work better."

Last week FNB launched the country's first South African-based bank account that allows transactions in multiple currencies. The online account is designed for receiving foreign-earned income, such as dividends or proceeds of equity transactions, and can handle US and Australian dollars, British pounds sterling, euros and Indian rupees, said Raj Makanjee, CEO of core banking solutions at FNB.

He said the multi-currency account lets customers make investments of up to R4-million offshore per annum, as provided by the exchange control regulations.

Added Jordaan: "For a number of businesses, the PayPal service has revolutionised their businesses as they have leveraged this service to access more than 100million PayPal users globally.

"I continue to be amazed at the level of entrepreneurship in South Africa and the diversity of businesses using the service."