Are all PayPal features fully available now in Sri Lanka?

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Social media posts have recently claimed that PayPal is now fully available in Sri Lanka for international payments and receiving money to bank accounts as of February 24th. We verified the accuracy of this claim.

Social Media Posts :

Some social media posts indicated that “PayPal had finally arrived in Sri Lanka”, indicating that the ability to receive money through PayPal was made available recently.

Facebook | Archived Link

These posts were viral in Sinhala as well, and netizens who have been awaiting PayPal functionality to receive funds in Sri Lanka were very curious about the veracity of this news.

Explainer:

To assess these claims, we compared the PayPal dashboard of a user in the Philippines, where the service is fully functional, with the dashboard currently available to Sri Lankan users.

A fully functional dashboard of a Filipino PayPal customer is seen below.

Dashboard obtained on February 24th of a Sri Lankan user below.

Comparing these two dashboards confirms that while PayPal’s old accounts in Sri Lanka currently do not show business features such as invoicing, payment links, and request money to users, due to limitations that have been introduced, particularly regarding the ability to receive and withdraw money.

Therefore, though the social media posts claim that as of February 24, 2026, PayPal is fully operational in Sri Lanka, it is still not possible to withdraw money to a bank card or bank account. Although the option to add a bank account or get one is listed, it remains inactive.

Although Sri Lanka is also seen among the PayPal-enabled countries, the country is only provided with two options: Buy and Send.

www.paypal.com/lk/home| Archived Link

We also examined the features provided to India and found that it offers more options than Sri Lanka.

www.paypal.com/in/home

It is also seen that in countries like the United States, more alternative methods are widely available.

www.paypal.com/us/home

Central Bank of Sri Lanka

We inquired with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to further confirm this.

They mentioned that they still cannot officially declare that PayPal is fully operational, but they are continuing to work towards full operationalizing PayPal.

Ministry of Digital Economy

The Ministry’s Media Secretary stated that the country is in the final phase of enabling PayPal inward remittances, but there is still no official launch date announced.

He emphasises that the move is aimed especially at freelancers and small and medium online businesses, to receive payments formally through PayPal instead of relying only on card-based channels.

According to him, once implemented, the PayPal remittance channel will operate under Central Bank regulations, offering a transparent, traceable and government-recognised mechanism for digital income. More on this here.

PayPal

PayPal is a globally recognised standard for online money transfers, facilitating both commerce and service payments. While Sri Lanka is technically a supported country, local foreign exchange regulations and banking laws have historically prevented the activation of its full feature set.

PayPal’s own support documentation notes that full functionality may be limited in Sri Lanka due to the complexities of local finance laws. While users can send money abroad, Sri Lankan law currently prevents the transfer of funds from other countries into local accounts via the platform.

PayPal can be fully restored to the country by enabling full internal payment functions, such as foreign exchange controls and bank compliance, and allowing receiving and withdrawing funds locally.

Currently, the Central Bank is focused on restoring PayPal to the country. However, as the Central Bank and the Ministry of Digital Economy stated that PayPal has not officially announced the full availability of fund receipt and withdrawal in Sri Lanka, there will likely be indications that PayPal will be reactivated soon.