Palestinians call out PayPal for discrimination
PayPal's refusal to offer services in Palestine is impeding the region's economic growth and preventing many freelance knowledge workers from receiving digital payments.
Muhammad Hassanein, a Palestinian in his 30s from Gaza, has nine year of experience as an online freelancer in content writing, website management and programming.
“Freelance platforms mostly deal with PayPal, which does not provide services for Palestinians. I received a payment once and then my account was suspended,” he told Al-Monitor.
“I tried to resort to Western Union, but I could not receive my money from several platforms that said they only dealt with PayPal, which prompted me to circumvent [the system] to get my money, and as a result all my accounts on freelance platforms and websites were closed,” he said.
PayPal, the most-used company for online payments, does not serve Palestinians, which negatively affects their work, especially in the the Gaza Strip, where online and remote jobs are often the only available work.
