In an extremely confounding move that will further restrict the financial rights of its users, PayPal issued a statement announcing that as of April 19, it will initiate a number of changes that will aim to introduce more transparency within the company’s internal monetary dealings.

While the blog post contains a wide array of specifics related to PayPal’s current transfer setup, some of the changes that will directly affect the company’s core user base include:

Balance Functionality: depending on whether an individual has provided sufficient identification documents to PayPal, the company will restrict a persons account usage. As a direct result of this, users will only be able to hold their funds in a linked bank account or debit card. Higher Transaction Fees: in place of its long-standing ‘variable rate pricing’ scheme, the company is now deploying a new financial model wherein a flat fee of $2.99 or $4.99 will be imposed on all transactions ( US-based transfers will employ a different fee structure) New Debit Charges: when transferring money using a linked credit/debit card, users will be charged a flat fee depending upon the location of the recipient. Not only that, there will also be an added surcharge of 2.9% of the transaction amount along with a fixed-fee depending upon the currency in use.

Along with the aforementioned changes, PayPal has also put in place new measures to crack down on stealth, unverified accounts.

This means that individuals can no longer use PayPal to facilitate small financial transfers via non-identifiable profiles.

Lastly, subscribers are strictly limited to one account, thereby making international payments via PayPal even more expensive than using BTC (as seen in the chart below).

Final Thoughts

With the implementation of these new rules, people will either have to burn a deeper hole in their pockets or will have to move towards other payment alternatives such as Bitwage, CryptoPay, Coinbase Commerce etc.

Whatever may be the case, this move further strengthens the position of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and primes them to be the forebearers of international payments in years to come.