How to link PayPal in South Africa to Standard Bank
Please get some tissue paper. South Africa has hectic currency control regulations and so you can't use PayPal directly. You have to go via FNB. But it's possible, you just have to shed a tear first.
Banks never learnt what user-friendliness is. Then you get to a scenario where you're dealing with a 3rd party (or a 4th party in this case), and suddenly you land in a cesspool of crap because it's so hard to get something done.
This is actually ironic because user-friendly, and SEO friendly setup guides, would be good for all brands. But there you go, you have to Google to death to get something done.
This guide shows how how to link PayPal in South Africa to Standard Bank if you already bank with FNB.
Long story but you have to go via FNB. Before I linked from PayPal to FNB and I also almost cried, so I'm not going to try and cover that in this round. Rather I'll just focus on the Standard Bank side.
You don't need an FNB account.
You need patience and good glasses because the menus are all over the show, sometimes even hidden.
Now hold on tight, get the popcorn, turn on some death metal. Get ready for delayed OTPs, convoluted menus, and bizarre UI choices made in a lab for the millions of banking rats. FNB is one of the better banks but somehow this PayPal workflow is a huge nightmare.
Let's get started:
Boom! We've reached our first dead end. Apparently log into FNB first. Aha, let's do that then after this screenshot.
Back to logging on. Let's see where this PayPal menu lurks:
When you google this, they say "accounts menu" but never "flyout" menu. What's even worse if you choose the flyout menu in the wrong place there is nothing leading back to the maze of zero.
Ps. message to lead UI designer: This is called a context menu. Maybe label it better next time?
At this point you should be good to go but we would love to hear from you if you're still stuck. I'll gladly update this post with more screenshots, because frankly, I'm so sick of this.
Edit:
After receiving another US based transfer to my PayPal account, I got the following message in PayPal:
PayPal balance
$175,00
Available
Transfer Funds
When you click Transfer Funds you go here:
As to be expected the link doesn't go to the right place. Instead it goes to a holding page for marketing where you see a pretty lady holding up a phone convincing you what a gloriously beautiful service PayPal and FNB has together.
https://www.fnb.co.za/forex/payments/paypal.html
Pretty much from here you are stuck and you have to log into your banking and start the navigation process all over again.
In our case we logged in, and there was no money. Go figure. We click the settings below to see if we can link the balance but got this error instead:
(E-90909) We were unable to process you request. Please try again later
Notice the typo above "you request". This is visual evidence of a poor integration.
Make no mistake, I give FNB 10 points for trying to solve the misery of exchange control. However, I give them 1 point for usability and maintaining a system that allows South African to conduct international commerce.
After more fumbling about it turns out that PayPal made no less than 5 transactions to validate a TymeBank account. One transfer, one service fee, one reverse transfer, one reverse service fee, and then a few hours later a transaction:
EFT for VODXYZ 0.01
Go figure, that was the code. But did it solve linking the balance? Nope, same error as in yellow above. Still broken, still frustration.