Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
oonwoye.com
Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
1–10 of 107 posts
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#2start a corporate shell in the UK? (or some other cheap place)
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#3"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments.
The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures.
Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0
Fuck off."
That's really not a very convincing counterargument.
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#4What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand.
Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world.
The country is the biggest market in Africa, people are quickly getting connected to the world, it's just not morally right to exclude an entire set of people in such a dismissive manner.
Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly decided to exclude Arizona from using Paypal because it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud. A lot of people would protest at the unfairness of this action.
But because it's Nigeria, there are very few people to protest.
Paypal is a site that is only useful when everyone uses it. And everyone IS using it. Once they have entered that stage, it be becomes virtually impossible for other payment providers to compete effectively. In that situation, the market cannot solve this problem. There is no niche payment provider going to pop-up just for Nigeria. Paypal, once it so strongly dominates the market, has a moral obligation not to exclude anyone from using their services. It can't just stamp a country as not "allowed to use paypal"
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#5Are these famous "get money from your dead uncle in Nigeria", are the spamers really from Nigeria? Or is it operated from some basement in Brooklyn?
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#6What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world. The country is the biggest market in…
What is PayPal dominating? The number of sites that accept credit cards dwarfs the (overlapping) number of sites that accept PayPal for payment.
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#7Are these famous "get money from your dead uncle in Nigeria", are the spamers really from Nigeria? Or is it operated from some basement in Brooklyn?
At least some of them really were in Nigeria. You can find plenty of evidence from people reverse-scamming the senders of those letters for entertainment.
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#8What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world. The country is the biggest market in…
What is PayPal dominating? The number of sites that accept credit cards dwarfs the (overlapping) number of sites that accept PayPal for payment.
Nigerian issued credit/debit cards (mastercard/visa) don't work internationally, so can't be used to pay for online items.
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#9This is a problem that will be fixed only when payment fraud in the country decreases. That'll happen in part simply by increasing the number of people online and making purchases. There are several countries my websites won't allow payments from, but Nigeria isn't currently on that list because it's not been a problem country for me in recent years. I'm sure other retailers are acting on real data too and would stop blocking Nigeria if they could.
Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web
#10"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments. The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures. Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0 Fuck off." That's really not a very convincing counterargument.
Hmm, how many paypal killers have been created? Now you want to go create a paypal killer from an african country with a low internet population, and expect big sites to support this? I think "fuck off" is an appropriate answer to people suggesting this - it's just not going to happen! It's obvious that it won't happen, so anyone suggesting it...just doesn't get it, I guess.