Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
PayPal, the global online payment system, used as a deposit/withdrawal option by many forex brokers, announced it is suspending operations in Turkey. From June 6 the Turkish customers of the platform would not be able to accept or send payments via PayPal.
The reason is that the Turkish Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency rejected the company’s application for license because PayPal does not keep its payment servers in Turkey, as required by new regulation.
According to a statement on the Turkish-language site of PayPal, customers will be able to log into their accounts and transfer the outstanding balance to a Turkish bank account. The company also noted it will continue its efforts to obtain a license for operations in Turkey, but meanwhile it will have to suspend its operations.
PayPal is a popular payment service used by online shops and as a convenient means for deposit and withdrawal by the clients of many forex brokers such as FxPro, Oanda, Trading212, Alpari, eToro, Pepperstone, RoboForex, AdmiralMarkets and FXDD.
Apparently the Turkish forex broker landscape is dominated by local companies and there are around 40 of them. Most of them offer only the traditional bank transfer as means for deposits and withdrawals. There are also several large international brokers such as Saxo Bank, XTB, Phillip Capital and PrimeTrade.
An SMN check revealed that of them only XTB, which recently debuted on the Warsaw stock exchange and got a head start outperforming FXCM and Gain Capital in terms of market cap, offers PayPal as a money transfer option. It, however, also provides other means such as bank transfers and credit/debit card payments, so it seems that PayPal’s withdrawal from Turkey would not affect much the forex brokers operating in the country.
