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Ask HN: Safe ways to recieve small amounts of money in India (no paypal)?

8 points by rick_2047 ↗ HN
This may be a stupid questions, but I have already accepted in my most famous blog post that I have made asking stupid questions a habit.

I received a small gig after I posted a comment on HN (I just love you all). The payments will be small, around 12-15$/ payment (menial work I suppose) . The problem is I have never done an international transaction before. I have a bank account which does support internet banking, but a cousin of mine has informed me that there can be some problems if I receive payments in Dollars (or any other bank currency) directly to my bank account. I don't want to you paypal because a) I do not have my PAN card ready yet, and b) I have heard too many horror stories about it.

So my question is, is there a safe way (tax department safe, if you know what I mean) to get such small payments in India?

17 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 40.6 ms ] thread
zaidf
Xoom.com
rick_2047
I checked out the site, seems really nice. I think the payer would have to register yes? Another question, I do have a PNB account (their trusted local partner) but do not have netbanking activated for it. Do they allow transfer to other banks say SBI. Also have you personally used this?
zaidf
I've used it a bunch over the past 5+ years.

Payer does not have to register. The money is just deposited into their accounts, though it could take upto a week especially if you pay using your bank acct and not credit card.

There should be a list of banks they accept. It's pretty comprehensive I think.

blntechie
If it's for work, their terms of service and RBI regulations forbids this. It will work but might not be exactly legal.

https://www.xoom.com/sendmoneynow/xoom-money-transfer-licens...

"Commercial/business remittances and remittances toward the purchase of property, investments or credit to Non-Residents’ accounts (NRE or NRO) and donations/contributions to charitable organizations are not permitted."

kingsidharth
Hmm. It's almost impossible to get money in India without Govt. knowing about it - RBI is way to smart for you.

Try Western Union? It's for personal payments thought - so make sure they have no problem sending it that way.

Call up your bank and ask if there is a problem in you receiving money in dollars, I don't think there should be any.

$12-15 are just 500-600 bucks. Don't bother much, if there is too much hassle, just skip the money.

rick_2047
I too am planning to do this one just for karma (the real one, not the HN one :) ) if it becomes too much a hassle.
kingsidharth
Sounds cool! Or ask them to buy you a domain name and get a website going :P
hippich
I am thrilled by something new emerging - http://bitcoin.org

If you like emerging technologies - check it out!

rick_2047
This looks really exciting, but I believe we are not ready yet
eof
I put like 3 months of cpu time into generating coins, while the difficulty raised an order of magnitude and the value has gone up a couple orders of magnitude.
hippich
BTW, you always can accept PayPal and never deposit it to your bank account. Instead spend it for purchases on ebay, hosting or domain name.
oomkiller
Hawala?
vkdelta
Unless you want to send him to tihar
mahmud
What? Why?

Hawala is perfectly acceptable. I use it to transfer money throughout the U.S. because it's cheaper than Western Union, and faster than bank transfer. 5 mins, $6 to send $200.

vineet7kumar
If you are getting money for some website or some service and your customers are general users, I guess it is best to stick to paypal (please get a PAN card ASAP). General users might be uncomfortable to use other lesser known methods to make payments. "So my question is, is there a safe way (tax department safe, if you know what I mean) to get such small payments in India?" Please do not evade taxes. Do follow legal means to save them but do not do anything illegal (i.e if you mean this way).