Yesterday, The PayPal Blog announced that they have a new addition to the PayPal Israel team: Oded Zehavi. First, I want to congratulate Mr. Zehavi on this new position and offer my sincere and best wishes.
As a PayPal user and merchant, I do have some suggestions to Mr. Zehavi. I tried leaving a comment on the blog post but it was rejected. So, here are some pointers to get your started.
1. Nurture your existing community
There is already a nice user base of PayPal merchants in Israel. Most of us are not completely happy with the service and we have a lot to say. Before you embark on a massive campaign aimed at extending your users base: stop and listen. This will make it easier for you to retain the new customers you will gain.
PayPal is an extremely uncommunicative company. Getting quality answers to questions is nearly impossible. Especially if you reside in a country that doesn't have a local PayPal representative. Your only choice is to contact the North American support and they usually fail to answer questions related to your specific location. More than once I got misleading information and had to re-iterate my questions (each iteration usually takes at least 3 business days). Phone support is a true joke: you get to the international support and they ask you for an American social security number.
Well, I know this can improve and I hope it will.
2. We want more features
For starters, I want Website Payments Pro. I want to sell using PayPal without forcing my users to open a PayPal account. On the face of it, Website Payments Standard should provide this service. De facto, this depends on Geography. For example, I have a customer from Brazil which was forced to open a PayPal account.
Israeli vendors need a simple and cheap way to work with credit cards. PayPal is it. Let us take advantage of the platform you already have.
3. Israeli bank accounts support
This should have been number one, but you already know that. Customers in Israel are forced to transfer their received payments through a Visa branded credit card. This is awkward and unnecessary. Enough said.
I'm sure I'll have more questions and comments. However, if you will follow my first advice, the dialog will become much simpler. For sure.
