Regulations coming into play today force PayPal to halt Japanese
personal transactions.
Kosuke Seto, head of marketing for PayPal Japan made a statement
on the company website. He said: “This only affects our customers
in Japan. PayPal members outside of Japan may continue to send
money to Japanese residents and our Japanese customers can continue
to use PayPal to shop online and pay for goods and services for
commercial transactions.”
Seto did not specify a time for how long the service will be out
for, but added: “We’ll update you when we have a date for when the
service will be back up.”
In accordance with the new law, Japanese firms are now expected
to apply for a license to offer personal money transfer
services.
This isn’t the first time PayPal have fallen foul of Government
licensing rules. In February of this year, the company was required
to cease personal payments to and from India for a month until they
received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval.
The news comes as a blow to PayPal, after only announcing its
plans to double its Asian workforce two weeks ago.
