ZhmieXD
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PayPal got Blocked in My Country
🕑 Added 2022-07-31 12:33:40 +0000 UTCWell this has already been posted on DA but I'm gonna have you guys, my patrons, informed of what happened. I also announced it first on Twitter, So you might have already checked it, (if not, you can check it out right here).
So, yesterday, around 11 AM Western Indonesian Time, PayPal became inaccessible through Indonesian ISPs, and the reason for that is that the Minister of Communication and Informatics lately rolled out a new rule where every Online Services must register to their database. Those who are failed to do so before the due date, which is July 29th, will have their access blocked for Indonesians. PayPal is among those who haven't registered themselves to our Ministry's database in time, including Steam and Epic Games Store (Go figure! We can't purchase and play a lot of games here right now!)
As for PayPal though, the Ministry have unblocked it temporarily for 5 days (really? dammit.), so that we can withdraw all the remaining funds of it or migrate it to any other platform. But from what I can tell, this block is temporary, and they will lift the block once all these aforementioned sites comply to this new law issued by them. Besides, so far what they have done is just telling Indonesian ISPs to cut traffic from the users to the site. PayPal has yet to decide whether or not they'll stop their service in Indonesia, but there have been reports from other users who couldn't receive incoming payments from international users for the time being, and if they announced that they will stop their services here, then, well, I'm screwed ^^;
However, I've started to think of some alternatives, made an account for some of them even, and here's what I got planned for now:
- I have opened myself a page on Buy Me A Coffee, which you can check right here, where you can send some donations. I will also in the future post my old works there, just like I did on Patreon, and I will also consider opening a commission page there as well. But until the PayPal Situation got sorted out, I'll be less active there.
- Since My Patreon payout is coming next month, and I still have until Friday to do any transactions on PayPal, I can still use it to withdraw my Patreon payout. However, I have made an account on Payoneer, which is an alternative to PayPal, and if the block goes for longer or ever (hopefully neither of the two), I'll use Payoneer in favor of PayPal as perhaps my new commission payment method, but mainly to withdraw my payouts on Patreon. So to all my patrons, keep it up! I'm completely fine!
- Since it's just a nationwide web traffic block though, when the temporary unblock expires I'll try to use some workarounds like setting a Private DNS on both my devices, which I already did before the temporary unblock, and I'll try to open new slots for August anyway. For now, I'll see if the transactional stuff still works in my end by withdrawing my Patreon payouts to PayPal and then to my bank account during this unblock, and then we'll see if it's still possible to receive, send and withdraw after it.
Above all else, I hope you guys are fine. Cheers! :D
