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

[rick_2047]

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?

[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.

[sandGorgon → kingsidharth]

Gift certificates? e.g. Indiaplaza

[rick_2047 → kingsidharth]

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 → rick_2047]

Sounds cool! Or ask them to buy you a domain name and get a website going :P

[rick_2047 → kingsidharth]

My thoughts exactly

[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).

[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.

[hippich]

I am thrilled by something new emerging - http://bitcoin.org

If you like emerging technologies - check it out!

[eof → hippich]

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.

[rick_2047 → hippich]

This looks really exciting, but I believe we are not ready yet

[oomkiller]

Hawala?

[vkdelta → oomkiller]

Unless you want to send him to tihar

[mahmud → vkdelta]

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.

[zaidf]

Xoom.com

[blntechie → zaidf]

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."

[rick_2047 → zaidf]

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 → rick_2047]

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.