PayPal expands payments services to help Ukrainian citizens, refugees

WASHINGTON - PayPal Holdings Inc expanded its services to allow Ukrainian citizens and refugees to receive payments from overseas, a move a senior Ukrainian official called a huge help as Russian forces continued to attack the country.

PayPal Chief Executive Dan Schulman told Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in a letter that Ukrainians would also be able to transfer funds from their PayPal accounts to eligible credit and debit cards. The company has waived its fees on such transactions through June 30.

More than 3 million Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, an action Russia has described as a "special military operation.".

PayPal's move will allow refugees and Ukrainians to receive funds from friends and family members in the United States and elsewhere, and could also be used to transfer social payments by governments in the future, said Vladyslav Rashkovan, Ukraine's alternative executive director at the International Monetary Fund.

"It makes a huge difference for people," Rashkovan told Reuters, lauding Schulman's personal engagement in accomplishing the change in just two weeks.

Rashkovan said he spoke with some Ukrainians on the street outside his office about the new capability and they immediately opened an account at PayPal.com/ua/home to send money to their relatives. Ukrainian officials have been pushing for the expanded services since 2015, after Russia annexed the Crimea region, he added.

PayPal said it would start making the expanded services available on Thursday, with customers able to send and receive funds from their Ukrainian PayPal Wallet in dollars, Canadian dollars, British pounds and euros.

Once a customer transfers funds from their PayPal Wallet to an eligible Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card, the money will be available in the currency associated with that card.

While PayPal is waiving its fees for several weeks, it noted exchange rates and fees charged by a customer’s card issuer or bank account may still apply.

Previously, Ukrainian citizens could send money from PayPal accounts, but were unable to receive funds.

PayPal earlier this month shut down its services in Russia, joining many financial and tech companies in suspending operations there after its invasion of Ukraine.

-reuters

Facebook, Twitter highlight security steps for users in Ukraine

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc has set up a special operations center to monitor the conflict in Ukraine, and it launched a feature so users in the country can lock their social media profiles for security, a company official said in Twitter posts on Thursday.

Twitter Inc on Wednesday posted tips on how users can secure their accounts against hacking, make sure their tweets are private and deactivate their accounts. The company tweeted the safety tips in English, Russian and Ukrainian.

Both social media platforms are often used by political activists and researchers to disseminate information during times of crisis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday also raised concerns about the spread of disinformation about the conflict on social media.

With one click, users in Ukraine can lock their profile to prevent users who are not their friends from downloading or sharing their profile picture, or seeing posts on their timeline, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Twitter also shared information on how users can deactivate their accounts.

As the conflict in Ukraine escalated on Thursday, social media users took to platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter to post videos of evacuation lines, helicopters in the sky and anti-war protests in Russia.

On short-form video app TikTok, the hashtags "Russia" and "Ukraine" had 37.2 billion and 8.5 billion views, respectively.

-reuters