Yesterday I got a mail from Payoneer. It was actually a notification in change in regulation. Most of the time I am not interested in such mails but this time, for no reason, I read this mail and was shocked by the content of the mail. It was written that
"Payoneer cards will be blocked for transactions in the countries listed by the US government as having strategic Anti Money Laundering (AML) deficiencies."
And as anyone can expect Pakistan was listed.
I think this is worst. I mean this will take the freelancing in Pakistan to stone age. Pakistan is the one of the major country in this field. And Payoneer was the most cheapest and fast method to get payments. It was easy and the first choice of freelancer as a payment method such as PayPal is already not supported in Pakistan.
Most of the Freelancing websites such a RentaCoder provides some help when you are going to select some Payment Option. So i will give a brief review of their help. When you go to their Payment option page there are 4 payment options
- Snail Mail
- PayPal
- Payoneer
- Western Union
First of all, let us discuss about Snail Mail. It is written very clear on the main page that
"This method is NOT recommended to workers in Pakistan or minor Indian cities, as the mail system tends to be less reliable in these cases."
So no chance for this option. And off course they are right. Pakistan Post is never been so efficient and reliable.
Now let’s talk about PayPal. PayPal is the world's most popular online payment system. It is the cheaper and faster system. Even RAC fee for transferring payment is just $2.00. But unfortunately PayPal is not available in Pakistan because of Pakistani Laws. So, this option is useless to discuss.
Third one is Payoneer. As I have mentioned earlier, this was the most efficient method of payment in Pakistan. But now, thanks to those who were involved in money laundering, Payoneer also block its services in Pakistan.
Now the only remaining option is western union. Western union is also very efficient and easily available. But it is very expensive.
Let us compare the payments of all these. For $100 following is the charges comparison. It is for the personal transfer. Charges are written in front of every service.
- Western Union: $15
- PayPal: 3.4% means $3.4 + $0.3 so total $3.7
- Payoneer: no such charges only $2.5 every ATM transaction and 2.2% for currency conversion.
For $200 nothing will change for PayPal and Payoneer except for western union which will now cost $22.
So this is very clear view of what we have. More fees for same money. So this is the first step to end Freelancing career in Pakistan. We all request Government of Pakistan to please make some Laws so we can even live in this country.
