[ Issue ] : internal error when I tried to pay

Sorry, I had some kind of editing error there. I didn't clicked “Internal server error”! I clicked the button named “Pay Offer”. Thanks.

Bug fixed, issue paid, all good.

Did everything else work as expected? (like going to Paypal site and back to FS, payment confirmation emails, etc)?

This feature hasn't ran a lot, so every feedback matters.

Thanks!

It worked fine from my end. mk-fg told me on IRC that he can't actually receive paypal payments, so I wonder what happened to the $24.25 that I gave to PayPay to give to him.

(Go Bitcoin!)

I'll follow up with him. Thanks!

Bitcoin is in my queue, just bear with paypal alittle longer :)

I just sent him an email:

Hey Mike, what's up?

This is Tony, the FreedomSponsors guy

Zooko made a payment to you. He told you might have some trouble getting it.
What's the status on that? Did paypal send you instructions on how to get your money?
Please reply on this Feedback topic
http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/60/internal-error-when-i-tried-to-pay

Cheers
Tony

Well, it's kinda simple - my country is Russia, and it's not on this whitelist (“Send. Receive. Withdraw.” part): https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries-outside

I think it's actually about to be, in the past (2010-2011), PayPal also blocked any payments to users who specified “Russia” as a country, but then allowed that about a year ago.
Local currency was added to policies a couple of months ago, and last I've heard is that they will allow transactions in it starting from November (don't have a link, possibly rumors), but even that doesn't mean that it'd be possible to withdraw money to non-US accounts.
There are workarounds (like registering an US po box and then opening a US bank account for it), exchanges and laundering services, but I'm not really familiar with these schemes.

Anyway, the PayPal$ have arrived to the PayPal account safely, so I think the issue is resolved.
Actually, figuring that there's no sense in letting them rot there, I donated these through the button on tahoe-lafs site, so I'd say they were well-spent already ;)

Thumbs-up for bitcoin, though I don't think withdrawal process there is much easier - you still have to find a third party, willing to make shady taxless transfers across the globe (is it even possible? iirc wire transfer fee is fixed $30) or just buy BTC locally.
PayPal limitation seem to be that such entity would have to be located in 20-30 countries on the aforementioned list, which is not the case for BTC.
That said, I'm quite ignorant of such processes, so can be completely wrong here.

The thing about Bitcoin is that there is competition among payment facilitators, so I expect it to get easier and cheaper over time (unless some disaster strikes).

@mk-fg, thank you for the clarification

So you can't withdraw, but you can spend the money anywhere that accepts Paypal, is that right?

Well that's better. Not good enough for what I want FreedomSponsors to be though.

If you want to follow up on my research about this topic, feel free to watch this issue

@Tony

Right.

Looking a bit further into the issue, I've found a lot of sources saying that it's relatively easy to link PayPal account to Payoneer, to which one can withdraw, and Payoneer accounts are relatively easy to open here (and in any part of the world afaik).
It involves some good will on behalf of PayPal (you have to provide proof of services to it and then it's free to refuse you such an option), more comission fees and ~month of waiting for the Payoneer card to arrive through mail, so doable, but quite far from effortless.

@zooko

True, in a sense that entities accepting PayPal are at it's mercy.
Unfortunately, whole bitcoin economy apparently has the same problem.

@mk-fg

Thanks for digging that info. Payoneer doesn't look very good either… :(
If you wanna share new insights about how FS can address this problem, please drop it here –>
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