Not that PayPal has never reached the Philippine shores. We already have PayPal a while back. Only that the one they gave us before was a way to pay for our online purchases. Now we are able to receive payments/donations through them. A boon to programmers, designers, professional bloggers, writers, SEOs and whoever who live off the internet. The ability to receive funds alone is reason for us to rejoice.

If you haven't heard of PayPal before, which I doubt. It's a payment gateway/service acquired by eBay a long time ago that enabled payment for items and services bid, bought or sold at their stores. It's a hassle free form of transferring funds online. If that wasn't clear enough, picture this: PayPal is virtually your money on the internet. It is so because it's the widest accepted way of sending or receiving online funds.

PayPal being finally here is perfect. Except for one thing. You can only withdraw the amount to a US bank. I'm not clear yet whether you should open an account with a bank in the US or having an account to a local US based bank is enough. I do have one workaround at the moment that could work. It's allowed to withdraw funds to a debit card. Unionbank issues VISA debit cards locally called EON or eWallet. Take your pick. I have EON and it works like a charm for online purchases. I'm definitely going to try withdraw money to it in the next few days when I'll be charging my offshore clients for services rendered.