How to open a PayPal account in Nigeria

PayPal is the world’s number one online money transfer platform and is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide to send and receive money. For years, PayPal had basically shut Nigeria out due to our notoriety for Internet-related fraud. As fraud detection techniques improved as well as Nigeria’s notion as the largest economy in Africa, PayPal has now lifted restrictions on Nigeria. Owning a PayPal account is quite simple and you can do that in two ways.

PayPal website

1. First thing you do is to go to www.paypal.com/ng
2. Click on signup…select personal or business
3. Personal will be for your personal debit card and business is for your company debit card (if you have one). I suggest you click personal if this is your first time.
4. After selecting personal, click continue…you should see “Nigeria” in the drop down area, your email address and password.
5. Fill in your email address (doesn’t have to be Gmail or yahoo. It could be @yourcompanyname)
6. Type in your password and make sure it is one you can remember
7. Go to the next page and type other details such as names, date of birth, address and phone number.
8. Also when filling in your address, make sure that it matches the same address details you filled when you opened a bank account
9. It takes you to a page where you fill in your debit card details
10. Type in your card number, expiry date and the last three digits behind your debit card.
11. Go to your email account and click on verify
12. Voila!! Your account is set up
13. Test it by sending $10 to anyone or to your PayPal account abroad (if you have one)
14. You get debited in naira and you should get an alert from your local bank

Using a wallet

First Bank offers this option through their exclusive deal with PayPal. How does this work?

1. Simply login in to your Internet banking account using your password and token
2. Choose the “PayPal wallet” in the main tab and click “create PayPal wallet” on the drop down menu
3. Select which cards you wish to link to your PayPal account and which card will be the default card. Try using one card for easy reconciliation
4. Press the button on your online token and confirm accordingly
5. Create a password in the pop up window that appears
6. Click on “agree and create account”.
7. Go to your registered email account with the bank which confirms that you have created a PayPal account

I performed the above steps and opened a PayPal account using my Zenith Bank master card so it is pretty simple. To test it, I also then used the new PayPal account I linked to my Zenith Master Card and transferred $10 to a PayPal account I set up years ago (when PayPal was not in Nigeria) using a Bank of America card. My Zenith Bank account was debited N2, 786. 56; this implies an exchange rate of N278.6. Note that the official exchange rate is about N198 while the black market rate is about N306. So don’t expect the bank to use the official rate. This of course is due to the currency crisis Nigeria is currently experiencing. It is also important to note that restrictions still apply on your transfers as such you may not be able to transfer more than $500 at a time.