[Web] Checkout and Other Payment Services in the Philippines

While I'm not actually a heavy online shopper or anything like that but of course it's always fun to add another Google product to my account and in the chance that I need to make an online payment, I'd rather have Google handle my account information. I guess I really just trust them, huh?

Anyway, based on this help page, technically Google doesn't support users with billing addresses in the Philippines. However when I actually tried signing up at the website, the Philippines is listed as one of the supported countries. I completed the signup process, got my confirmation email along with my $10 sign-up bonus and my credit card information is now saved as part of my Google Account. What's up with that?

Based on another help page, the Philippines is supported as a shipping destination, so this may connect to why I was able to sign-up. On a whim, I tried sending feedback to the Google team in the hopes that someone picks it up and edits the help page to reflect the Philippines as one of the supported countries or perhaps invalidate my account if the case warrants it. In the meantime, I'm holding off on experimenting with purchases until I know I'm not violating the ToS somehow.

On a side note, PayPal has also been made available to Philippine rresidents as of October of last year, which is somewhat good news for people like myself who signed up for the PayPal for the Philippines petition movement.

Before you jump up and down to celebrate that PayPal is available, allow me to clarify to what extent the service is available, especially in contrast to Google Checkout. Checkout is a payment only service that supports online payments but nothing else. PayPal for the Philippines also provides payment support and none of the other features currently available to US users, namely loading accounts through credit cards, receiving funds via PayPal and the ability to withdraw funds into a local bank account. You're also limited to sending only $100 unless you verify use of a credit card or a debit card. So there's no real difference between PayPal and Google Checkout at this point, unless either company decides to expand its portfolio anytime soon.

The only local payment service I remember trying to fill the void of online payment solutions available locally was a site once called PayPlus+ but is now called Kaban and is a member of the Yehey family of products. If you didn't already know, Yehey is a local search engine that has managed to survive over the years with limited success. PayPlus+ was previously limited to ATM signups for BancNet cardholders. The new Kaban now accepts more banks and now supports credit cards. Sadly, it remains strictly a payment site and does not support receiving payments.

Whoever does manage to support actual funds transfers will definitely make a pretty penny in terms of the Philippine remittance market. With at least $12 billion coming into the country every year in terms of remittances, there is a definite market for this service in order to escape the heavy transaction fees charged by services like Western Union.

Are you listening Google? PayPal? Don't you want a piece of this pie?

[Google] Another Google Week

While my real life situation continues to limit my blogging time, Google continue to come out with update after update that will keep any blogger busy. You have to admit, choosing to write about Google is practically a full-time job, which in turn becomes a testament of sorts to how dynamic Google can be as a company. Just look at how often new content shows up on blogs like the Google Operating System Blog or on Googlified, two of my favorite independent Google-related blogs.

This week we've been the beneficiaries of a number of little updates here and there across the Google-verse, so to speak. Some of the more interesting changes include letting you open attachments in compatible formats directly in Google Docs & Spreadsheets from GMail, a simple change but definitely handy and another part of the continuing integration of various Google products with one another. Could more integration with Picasa and Picasa Web Albums be far behind? I'm definitely crossing my fingers. Along with this, later this week Google also added five more features to GMail including the ability to forward an entire conversation or leaving Google Talk messages while offline.

This week we also saw the completion of the integration of Orkut and Google Talk as discussed here on the Google Blog. This means your Orkut contacts can also become your Google Talk contacts and vice-versa, definitely an interesting addition to the Google social networking service.

Google Checkout is offering free processing for the holidays for all Checkout users - definitely an interesting marketing push to get more retailers to sign up for the service.

Also, it's just been announced that all new Blogger accounts will be created in Blogger beta, surely a change that will bring joy to some users looking forward to the click-and-drag publishing and the security of being on Google's servers while some might not be so happy in the differences in how some of the templates are handled.

I'm sure there are others that I missed, but then again, there's always bound to be something Google is doing that we don't know about just yet.