Written by L.S.M Kabweza | From TechZim

This, it turns out, is a payments week! It’s official, PayPal is coming to Zimbabwe starting tomorrow, 17 June 2014.

The announcement was made today by Rupert Keeley, the executive in charge PayPal’s Europe Middle East and Africa region, in an interview he gave to Reuters.

PayPal will be opening up its services to Zimbabwe and some 9 other countries in Africa and Europe and South America. Notable of those is Nigeria which, even though it has Africa’s highest internet population at above 60 million. The other countries are Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Belarus, Paraguay, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco and Montenegro.

On why it’s happening now Keeley said: “PayPal has been going through a period of reinvention, refreshing many of its services to make them easier to use on mobile (phones), allowing us to expand into fast-developing markets,”

Part of the realisation ofcourse is that these markets won’t wait for PayPal to come, but will instead go to more flexible competition. And in the case of Zimbabwe, startups have emerged to fill the need for payments online. Like Paynow and Pay4App. Paynow was introduced to the market several weeks ago, and we first reported on it last week.

Unfortunately, not the whole PayPal

It’s not the full PayPal that’s being opened up in these 10 countries. According to Reuters PayPal is only offering “send money” services which means the peopl in these markets will now be able to create accounts using their local addresses and after that pay for services.

Read more at TechZim