De Facto Capital Controls Hit Pay Pal Users in Puerto Rico.

Note Well: When governments are financially squeezed, they squeeze the people even harder.

Paypal announced to its U.S. customers via email on Friday that it is ending its Puerto Rican service. The message read in part: “Person to person payments will not be made available for payments sent from Puerto Rico," reports Smaulgld.

A two percent tax on person-to-person exchanges is now levied on transactions as per the Puerto Rican legislature via a bill passed in December 2014. According to sources, the two percent tax made it difficult for Paypal to continue to offer its services in Puerto Rico.

In a note to its Puerto Rican customers Paypal wrote:

“Due to new government policies in Puerto Rico, we have made the difficult decision to no longer offer our person-to-person payment service to our Puerto Rican customers as of November 1, 2015.

“Our customers in Puerto Rico will no longer be able send money to friends and family abroad with Venmo or PayPal, but will be able to continue to use PayPal to pay for goods and services and receive payments.

“We regret any inconvenience this may cause our valued customers in Puerto Rico.”

 Smaulgld notes:

Paypal’s decision to suspend its service for Puerto Ricans wishing to send money from Puerto Rico to destinations abroad (including the mainland United States) acts as a de facto capital control that prevents money from leaving the island via person to person transactions.

The Puerto Rican Act that instituted the two percent tax states it as “necessary to establish recurring sources of income by imposing special charges on certain transactions carried outside and inside the jurisdiction of Peurto Rico..” …it is in the public interest to impose charges on transactions originated in the local jurisdiction involving assets that no longer circulate in the local economy (emphasis added)…”

 -RW