Unlocking borders and how we travel with PayPal

This article was written in partnership with PayPal. The text highlights how PayPal has helped us and what their company is all about.

Last time I wrote about PayPal and how it’s opened up opportunities for Lauren and I to live our nomadic lifestyles with more “peace of mind” I briefly chatted about how we love the ability to make and accept payments, without hassle, no matter where we are in the world.

But, this isn’t the best thing about about the payment platform. It’s that the internet and PayPal have combined to open up a HUGE market to us.

What do I mean by that?

Well, Lauren and I make money as freelance writers, photographers and we also run a digital agency — you can read more about the services we offer here — but the point is that we are entrepreneurs and we sell digital products and services over the internet.

Back in the day your market (the people that buy from you) was limited by your business’s location, and to a large degree, that is still the way the world operates today. The more foot traffic that passes your shop front, the more people are potentially going to buy from your stall. Hence the high cost of rent per square metre in popular malls.

Today however, the internet has broken down the walls of traditional trading and people can host their shop fronts online (i.e. websites.) PayPal has made it ridiculously easy for you and me to either buy from these “shops” or sell from our own sites, offering a faster, simpler and more secure way to pay and get paid online. And the best thing about it is that we don’t even have to be in the same country!

Which is exactly why we are digital nomads. We’ve taken this opportunity to travel AND work, simultaneously.

So where in the old days (ok, not that long ago) our businesses were restricted to how much rental we could afford, PayPal has allowed us to sell from our own home regardless of whether you’re selling digital products (like Lauren and I) or physical products. In the case of physical products, you would obviously partner with a leading shipping company like DHL to actually get your products to your customers.

For many of you, this is old news. Like us, you’ve seen the online market bloom over the last few years in countries like the USA, in Europe and first world economies. If you’re tech savvy, you’ve possibly even partaken in buying things from sites like Amazon, eBay and the incredible successful Etsy.

Even more exciting news however is that Africa has finally arrived on the scene and we can truly begin to start benefitting from this new technology. In recent times it has been recorded that more and more online shoppers from other African countries are shopping, online, from South African retailers – that’s massively exciting news for anyone with a business in South Africa.

Taking our trade across borders has never been so easy and I believe we can look forward to it only getting better. With PayPal, you get access to 173 million active accounts in 203 markets around the globe who look for the PayPal way to pay. You can also accept and hold balance in your account in up to 26 currencies — offering a customised and convenient checkout to your customers.

That’s all I have to say about the benefits of using PayPal this time. I know that many of you reading may have questions regarding how secure this all is and I’ll be addressing that topic in my next post.

Stay tuned.

Have any questions? Contact PayPal