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Few days back from time of this post, every Nigerian internet marketer would kill to have a Paypal account so as to easily run their online businesses but that wasn’t possible as a result of Nigeria not listed in their supported countries, though there are several ways to bypass their restriction and create a Paypal account in unsupported countries, it still wasn’t easy managing such accounts.

The good news all came up when Rupert Keeley, the executive in charge of the EMEA region of PayPal, the payments unit of eBay Inc, said in an interview on Monday (16th June, 2014) that 10 new countries were going to make their list of which Nigeria was included.

Paypal has been the world’s major means of Payment on the web, and bringing their services to Nigeria is one welcome development we have always been praying for. Though for now, Paypal has not enabled peer-to-peer transactions in Nigeria, you can only make purchases and not receive payments with your Nigerian Paypal account.

Here is a beginners guide to signing up a paypal account from Nigeria.

1. Visit Paypal Nigerian homepage viahttps://www.paypal.com/ng/ and click on Signup at the top right corner of the page.

2. Click on “Open Account” under the “individual” section for a personal account.

3. Fill in all details and click on “Agree and Create Account“.

Without verifying your paypal account, you would be placed at a $250 limit. Verifying your paypal account lets you spend as much as you will.

4. A new page would come up with a form to log in your Card details. I used my GT Bank’s Naira MasterCard to get mine verified.

5. You’ll be redirected to your account’s dashboard. But there are few things you still need to do. Firstly, you have to activate your paypal account by clicking the activation link sent to the mail you registered the account with. Secondly, you need to link and confirm your credit or debit card. Click on “Link and confirm credit or debit card” or “Get Verified” link in your account’s dashboard, insert your GTB Mastercard details here again, then click on “Continue“. You can make use of any Nigerian bank’s Visa or MasterCard.

6. Paypal would deduct $1.95 from your card which they’ll refund in 24hrs. Now, your bank will alert you via SMS or email with a code which you’ll use in completing the whole verification process.

Your bank’s SMS alert should read.

What you need do is copy the 4 digits before CODE (highlighted in red) from your mail or SMS alert. That’s what you need to confirm your card.

7. You now have to login once more to your Nigerian Paypal account and click on “Confirm Card” link which should appear on the right sidebar of your dashboard. Then type in the four-digits you copied from your bank alert and click on “Confirm Card” as shown below.

8. You’ll get a success popup if everything was fine and successful.

Here is a screenshot of my Nigerian verified Paypal account.

And that’s how easy it is to signup a Nigerian Paypal account and get verified using any debit or credit card. Remember, I made use of my GTBank MasterCard here and it did work for me.

Ques: Does Paypal only support the GTB Naira MasterCard In Nigeria?
Ans: No, people also making use of UBA, Zenith, Access and some others bank’s credit cards have been verified using same procedures in this tutorial.

Ques: What Credit Card Types are accepted by Paypal?
Ans: Paypal supports Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Debit or Credit Cards

Ques: How Do I Fund My Nigerian Paypal account to make online purchases?
Ans: You don’t have to worry about funding your paypal, whenever you make an online purchase, your linked credit/debit card would be charged.

Ques: Can I make Transfers to other Paypal Accounts?
Ans: No, for now Paypal has not enabled peer-to-peer transactions in Nigeria.

Ques: Do I need a token device before I can get Verified?
Ans: No, that isn’t necessary

Ques: Can I add My Bank Account to Nigerian Paypal like I did in my US Paypal?
Ans: No, PayPal doesn’t offer this feature at this time for Nigerians.

Ques: Can I add more than 1 Debit/Credit Card to my Paypal account?
Ans: Yes

Ques: Can I purchase services from sites like Fiverr, Addynamo, Amazon with a Nigerian Paypal?
Ans: Yes, it works on all sites that accept Paypal payments.

Now, I’ll be glad to know which card you used in verifying your Nigerian Paypal account. Share your thoughts using the comment section below, and please do not forget to share this post with your friends. They might find it useful. Cheers!