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January 07, 2011
Payoneer suspends services in India
Payoneer announced yesterday that they are temporarily suspending POS (point of sale) transactions in India. Probably the ATM transactions will be suspended pretty soon.
The move comes after the Indian regulators (viz RBI) objected to the use of these cards in India.
Payoneer offers prepaid Mastercard that can be used to withdraw money at ATMs or used in the shops (POS) throughout the world. These cards also work online. It is a popular method of remitting money from various freelancing websites like Elance, Odesk, Scriptlance.com etc.
It is easy to get a Payoneer card without much documentation. Probably that is the reason why RBI is concerned about these cards and have blocked them in India.
Payoneer says the problem is temporary and that they are working with the authorities to enable the services soon.
This block is similar to the one imposed on Paypal few months back. Paypal resolved the issue with RBI and IncomeTax authorities by making it mandatory to provide PAN (Permanent Account Number) when you open a Paypal account.
Posted by manish at January 7, 2011 02:40 PM