International transactions are nightmare

Posted on 08/11/2022 11:21:01 PM GMT

So on previous saturday, I was supposed to make payment for my VPS (hosted by Hetzner) where I host this website, private Matrix server and private VPN. However, while trying to do so I faced this dumb issue:

...and this started 3 days worth of constant arguements with the bank as well as with Paypal. Basically I was facing this error above even though I already enabled the option for international transaction for my debit card. So I contacted Paypal and they were telling me that they have no issues on their side and it was probably from the card issuer (aka bank) that was causing the problem while the bank was telling me my debit card was already capable for international transaction. I also tried 2 other debit cards capable for international transaction and all of them faced same issue. This despair continued for 3 more days until I somehow successfully made payment through Paypal. I still have no idea if the problem earlier was from the bank or from Paypal.

Necessity of Paypal

The reason why I am dependent on Paypal as I don't currently possess a credit card (as if I trust any website to just give off my card information anyway) nor I could do an international wire transfer as it would be very expensive to do so here. For context, doing a 10 Euro (around 817.69 Indian Rupees) transfer to someone would actually cost me around 21 euros after including taxes! (or around 1700 Indian Rupees) Hence why I found Paypal to be quite appealing as I can easily do international transaction without too much additional cost just by using my debit card. However, my experience with Paypal is not going great either if I am being honest.