PayPal site localized for Hebrew Users
Logo of PayPal.
Image via Wikipedia

Great news for Israeli eCommerce: PayPal users in Israel can now* manage their account completely in Hebrew.

They can also:

  • Check out from any site (worldwide) that supports PayPal in their native Hebrew
    • The language option may need be changed in the course of the transaction
    • Israeli merchants may default users to Hebrew, or allow the user’s default browser/account settings to select the language
  • For some time now, they can also pay in Shekels. This is especially important for local sellers that will surely want to add PayPal as a payment option, as it means that neither the buyer nor seller needs to pay currency exchange fees
  • Another feature that has been around for a while is that PayPal users with an Israeli account (meaning that the address they have registered in their PayPal profile is an Israeli one) can withdraw funds to an Israeli bank account without any fees (for withdrawals of 1000 ILS or more)
  • PayPal has been available in Hebrew for a while now via the PayPal iPhone App. Finally, eCommerce is coming to the phone in a real way.

It seems that the only major feature left for PayPal Israel to add is to allow buyers to fund transactions directly from their bank account (or to fund their PayPal account via their bank). No, I don’t have an inside scoop on when that will happen, but I also don’t believe it is in the best interest of users to have that feature, since most users like the added delay of having purchases appear in their bank balance. I know I do.

All in all, Israeli eCommerce sellers and even occasional users in Israel should be the greatest beneficiaries of the new PayPal language version. If you deal with Israeli merchants, adding PayPal to their site may be a nice way for them to boost sales, with very little new investment, but you may want to make sure the integration is done right. PayPal has great marketing (usually free) campaigns which promote merchants that have a good integration with their payment service. So, do it right, and contact your local office to make sure they know about your site, and hopefully invite you to join their next campaign.

*DISCLAIMER

  • As of press time, the Hebrew enabled portions of the PayPal site seem to be disabled. This page seems to be working best right now, in case you want to get an early peek. This may be a glitch in the early days of the launch, but since PayPal does not seem to have made any news about it themselves, we may have just seen the site launch before it is totally live. Stay tuned.
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