Thursday, October 13, 2011

The horror story that is making #payments abroad ...

The #translatewiki.net translation rally ends with the transfer of money. Transferring money is frustrating as often people end up with a pittance because of the costs to transfer money in a worst case (i.e. most expensive) scenario.

The translation rallies should boost the localisation for languages that will benefit the most. Many of these languages are spoken in countries where there is sadly no support by Paypall or where the cost of transferring money is prohibitively expensive.

Paypall does not allow the transfer of money to many countries including Brazil or India. As I have a colleague in India, India is not a real problem anyway. And please, you FIRST have to enable an e-mail account for paypall before can be transfered money to you.

Transferring money by Bank is not easy either. While an IBAN number is absolutely essential, it is probably one of bankings best kept secrets. Learning my own IBAN number was not straightforward at all; why can it not be part of the static information that is part of my internet banking information? It is as if making international payments should be difficult by design. It is as if global contacts are the preserve of companies and criminals only.
Thanks,
       GerardM


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