India, ever the black hole where business goes to die has come up with a new "challenge" for those brave souls who try to do business in this country but are not Indians (its hard enough for those too but not quite as bad).
From 12th of November this year a procedure called "KYC" (know your customer) is mandatory for all banks/accounts owners. While banks seem a bit more flexible in how they deal with the data requested PAYPAL on the other hand is rigid in how they interpret it. They do require a AADHAR card, a type of personal ID in India. Previously it was relatively easy to get one, even as a foreigner but lately Indian government decided that only Indians should get it. No big deal, unless one is dependent on bloody PAYPAL for doing business here - which we are.
Now our regular bank where we have our business account is happy with the aadhar of my college and co-director who is Indian so no problem there. But Paypal those morons figured that a PVT LTD has two directors and requires - unnecessarily - the aadhar from both. Its an online procedure, no human ivolved, and the helpline, when reachable (rarely) is unhelpful and quite frankly - gives a shit. The number of affected Indian Paypal customers having this problem seems too small to care.
The initial idea, to collect money onto my German PP account, then transfer it to the business account in India, does not work because PP does not transfer from private accounts to Business accounts (or rather xoom does not). I cant open a business account in Germany because that would make my income there taxable in Germany too and I don't want to pay double taxes.
So what we will try when the time comes in
- delete the existing PP account
- open a new account with only one director for a sole Indian owned PVT LTD
that probably will work, however, we have to re-use the bank account we have (for a long list of reasons too much to list here), so it depends on how long it takes for our bank account to be released from PP and available again for the newly created account.
So: if you plan to buy anything do it asap, we may be out of business for quite a while after 11th November.
If you are a US citizen and plan to purchase you may do it now and we will reserve the item ready to ship when postal services re-open, regardless of our Paypal status.
wish us luck!
From 12th of November this year a procedure called "KYC" (know your customer) is mandatory for all banks/accounts owners. While banks seem a bit more flexible in how they deal with the data requested PAYPAL on the other hand is rigid in how they interpret it. They do require a AADHAR card, a type of personal ID in India. Previously it was relatively easy to get one, even as a foreigner but lately Indian government decided that only Indians should get it. No big deal, unless one is dependent on bloody PAYPAL for doing business here - which we are.
Now our regular bank where we have our business account is happy with the aadhar of my college and co-director who is Indian so no problem there. But Paypal those morons figured that a PVT LTD has two directors and requires - unnecessarily - the aadhar from both. Its an online procedure, no human ivolved, and the helpline, when reachable (rarely) is unhelpful and quite frankly - gives a shit. The number of affected Indian Paypal customers having this problem seems too small to care.
The initial idea, to collect money onto my German PP account, then transfer it to the business account in India, does not work because PP does not transfer from private accounts to Business accounts (or rather xoom does not). I cant open a business account in Germany because that would make my income there taxable in Germany too and I don't want to pay double taxes.
So what we will try when the time comes in
- delete the existing PP account
- open a new account with only one director for a sole Indian owned PVT LTD
that probably will work, however, we have to re-use the bank account we have (for a long list of reasons too much to list here), so it depends on how long it takes for our bank account to be released from PP and available again for the newly created account.
So: if you plan to buy anything do it asap, we may be out of business for quite a while after 11th November.
If you are a US citizen and plan to purchase you may do it now and we will reserve the item ready to ship when postal services re-open, regardless of our Paypal status.
wish us luck!
