This article was written in partnership with PayPal. The text highlights how PayPal has helped us an what their company is all about.
As most of you probably know, Lauren and I have embraced a lifestyle somewhat out of the ordinary, a lifestyle in which we are able to work from wherever we find ourselves (as long as there’s internet) where we’ve traded cubicles for beaches and smart shoes for slip-slops. The short story is that when we got married in 2012 we sold all our stuff and left SA’s sunny shores to travel the world – read more about that here.
However, this nomadic lifestyle is one that is becoming more popular than most people imagine. The web 2.0, with its applications and web applications have created so many opportunities for people to leave the 9-5 lifestyle behind and work remotely from almost anywhere in the world.
Or your bedroom. If that’s your thing.
View from the office whilst working on the go from Koh Lanta, Thailand.
Lauren and I have taken advantage of this “tech manna” and have now lived in Thailand, Taiwan and Malaysia while working as freelancers and English teachers.
The thing about embracing a new lifestyle though is that there’s always going to be some teething problems. Thankfully these are just about all ironed now with the recent spate of tech companies offering services for just about everything. There literally is an “app” for just about anything these days.
One of the earlier and most frustrating issues we experienced was banking. Receiving money, making payments, forex hassles etc. etc.
As South Africans this challenge was slightly greater to overcome than for most. But then FNB thankfully partnered up with PayPal which was a huge *hallelujah!* moment for “digital entrepreneurs” like ourselves.
PayPal was created for a world where traditional banking methods and payment systems had become outdated and cumbersome. The company took the opportunity to fill a huge need and has now grown into an indispensable part of the way we accept payments and pay for anything we purchase online. To be honest, I now log into my PayPal account just as often as I do my FNB account.
I’ve actually never thought about that until right now.
Being freelance writers and bloggers a large portion of the work we invoice out is to clients from Europe and the USA. These invoices are all paid to us via PayPal.
Also, because we run a website, we have several digital “subscriptions” too, paid for via PayPal. On the flipside, we find PayPal the simplest way to make many of our expense payments too. Anything from website hosting fees to National Geographic subscriptions are paid via PayPal. It’s super easy and much more convenient than logging someone’s account number, banking code, swift code, bank name — basically their whole banking life history — into your recipient list every time you need to make a new payment.
Why let banking get in the way of work?
You can also make and request refunds if anything goes wrong or you change your mind about a purchase.
PayPal has become an essential element of our lives as digital nomads – we would probably be able to live without it, but it certainly saves us heaps of time and therefore money.
What I’ve outlined above are some of the core functions of PayPal. The company has grown a lot and now offers so much more, so in articles to come I’ll be outlining a couple more ways about how PayPal has paved the way for many businesses – both startups and the well-established — to offer simplicity to their customers and also expand profitability.
Stay tuned for more.
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