PayPal returns to Nigeria, but its reason for blacklisting the country for 20 years is still there
PayPal is back in Nigeria after two decades, but the fraud that drove its exit haven’t disappeared. What has changed, why Nigeria is now worth the risk?
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PayPal’s return to Nigeria through a partnership with Paga has sparked mixed reactions among Nigerians. While some are celebrating the return of the $55 billion global fintech, others have expressed disdain over what they describe as unfair treatment of Nigerians over the past 20 years — locking them out of a financial service essential to their livelihoods.<br />
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From articles to social media posts, many, especially freelancers, decried their sudden inability to access thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money stuck on PayPal after the fintech stopped serving Nigerians and several other African countries.<br />
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PayPal’s reasons for restricting Nigerians from using its service ranged from high fraud rates to compliance risks.<br />
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The company said its fraud monitoring systems detected cases of stolen credit cards used by individuals from blacklisted countries. According to PayPal, these countries lacked robust national identification systems and strict banking regulations, making credit card fraud easier to perpetrate.<br />
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However, many believe PayPal’s exit had more to do with discrimination. The pain of being locked out of earnings and a source of livelihood has led some Nigerians to insist that PayPal should be boycotted.<br />
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Fraud in Nigeria over the years <br />
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There has been a dearth of publicly available data on fraud in Nigeria since the early 2000s; however, academic research points to significant fraud activity in the country as early as 2002.<br />
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For instance, a 2009 paper titled Nigeria Tackles Advance Fee Fraud, published in the Journal of Information, Law & Technology at the University of Warwick, UK, found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Centre ranked Nigeria as the third-highest perpetrator of cybercrime globally in 2007.<br />
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This is notable when considering that fewer than 10% of Nigeria’s population at the time had access to the Internet.<br />
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Other data points on cybercrime in Nigeria from that period include:<br />
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