On May 6th, it will be my ninth month working as home-based web developer, web designer, technical support engineer, and system administrator for people from North America and Europe. I was surprised that I was able to last this long without losing much my enthusiasm on my field of work. Perhaps I already loved the people whom I interacted with everyday and they are now significant part of my life, despite the fact that I don’t see their faces often and we are divided by great distance. The Philippines is like 12 hours ahead from America’s Eastern Standard Time (EST) – meaning to say, I am nearly in the opposite side of the earth from the people I worked for.

Today, I reevaluated my workplace to see if things have changed in the course of nine months. I’ve been like a couch potato sitting in my chair all day long and working all the time – yet I was very productive – so no regrets at all. Work alone was not a problem at all since my skills tend to suffice the needs of my employer and I was quite fast adapting the business-work environment they embraced to me.

Last January, I showed my workplace in one of my blog posts. It was revealed there my real office situation at that time. Now, I want to show where I work now. There is not much difference but at least few things improved. I got a new chair, LCD monitor and new sound system – things that helped sustain my energy and zeal throughout the day of work.
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To the people of first-world nations, this isn’t new. But to many Filipinos and Indonesians who’ve been longing to actively participate in the booming Web market, this news matters: PayPal finally unlocks local bank withdrawal feature to Philippines and Indonesia members!

The Web’s most popular e-commerce and money transfer business, PayPal, just expanded their services to the Philippines and Indonesia. October 5 last year, PayPal rolled a mass mail announcing to their members residing in such countries about their initial withdrawal and receiving features. They announced that fund transfers are now available using debit or credit cards.

Though it was good news, and some Internet savvy people were jumping, it was still infant and very limited. This is true because the number of credit card and debit card holders in the area is smaller compared to the number of people who actually have bank accounts. Nevertheless, PayPal did a good introduction – much better than nothing.

Today, January 29, I got a copy of PayPal’s mass mail again saying that they have finally launched the much-awaited local bank withdrawal. I was very happy reading such news and I was imagining just how many IT people are jumping to the roof upon reading PayPal’s mail.

It is good to take note that eBay Inc., the company that owns PayPal business, might have launched the feature in order to support their campaigns of the localized versions of eBay.com website in the region. Either way, it’s still good news!

PayPal just unlocked millions of merchants and customers from the two nations to the online business world. Their expanded services enable more Filipinos and Indonesians to buy and sell products online, and to send and receive money through the Web. The lack of online money transfer agents in the previous years had always been the hindrance of the people from the said countries in participating money transactions on the Internet. This scenario is about to change though.

So, if you’re a Filipino or Indonesian who’ve been dreaming of using PayPal in participating Web transactions, now is the time to wake up, join our big brothers, and rock!

Sign-up for PayPal Now.