A door to PayPal, opened part way

At the launch ceremony, President Dr Mohamed Muizzu described the frustration it would end: "You could buy from the world, but you could not easily sell your talents to the world." But three weeks on, that remains an accurate description of the service that launched. A Maldivian can receive money from abroad, but cannot create merchant accounts.

At his press briefing last week, the president said 3,280 people had linked their PayPal accounts since the launch, of whom 2,159 had activated wallets as of June 29. 

Ooredoo declined to share usage figures. "We have seen a very positive response since the launch, with strong interest from customers across the Maldives," said Mariyam Shiuna Hameed, assistant manager of public relations. 

The Maldives Independent surveyed a small sample of content creators, web developers, guesthouse operators and a dive school. None of the 18 said they were using the service. One designer who had tried complained of being caught in a support loop between PayPal and Ooredoo, his account still carrying the label Maldivian accounts carried before the ceremony: send-only.

PayPal, the company, has not entered the Maldives, which remains a send-only market on its own platform. What launched is an integration built into Ooredoo's mFaisaa wallet, operated by a locally licensed subsidiary of Ooredoo's fintech arm and connected to PayPal through PayPal World. It is an interoperability network the company launched in July 2025 that links digital wallets across markets, closer in design to Visa's network than to the PayPal app most people know.

In November 2024, Ooredoo Fintech struck a direct deal with PayPal for its Qatari wallet. It then announced in September 2025 that it would integrate PayPal World across its wallets, naming mFaisaa among the early participants. The Maldives rollout became operationally possible in October 2025, when the Maldives Monetary Authority granted Ooredoo's fintech arm a licence to receive inward remittances.

The Maldives launch was the Qatar model extended through that shared layer rather than a fresh negotiation, Hussain Jinan, a Maldivian fintech founder, explained in a detailed analysis of the rollout. His interpretation is supported by Ooredoo Fintech's own description of taking a successful Qatar model to Oman and the Maldives.

The government rejects any suggestion that this falls short of PayPal's arrival. Contrary to claims by political opponents, "PayPal is now in the Maldives," Economic Development Minister Mohamed Saeed insisted last week.

But on the day before, President Muizzu appeared to acknowledge the limits. "This is now the first step," he said, adding that it opens the way to receiving dollars first with efforts underway on broadening the service. He said the same on PSM's Nation Chat podcast on June 25, crediting the Ooredoo integration to the government's "enabling" from day one of the administration: "Bringing new services and facilitating new services through PayPal is to come. Establishing a digital economy is a major pledge of mine, taking it to where the digital economy can contribute 15 percent of the country's GDP by 2030." YouTube monetisation is in the pipeline with Google, he added, referring to Google's Dhivaru project, announced in November 2025, a trans-Indian Ocean subsea cable linking the Maldives with Oman and Christmas Island, along with a connectivity hub in the country.

Ooredoo confirmed that the PayPal service is built around receiving.

"Customers can receive funds from PayPal into their mFaisaa USD wallet. They can also transfer USD funds that were previously withdrawn from PayPal back to their PayPal account through the mFaisaa app," Shiuna, Ooredoo's assistant manager of public relations, confirmed to the Maldives Independent.

But that is the only outbound direction. The US dollar pocket cannot be topped up locally. A Maldivian cannot load Rufiyaa and pay a foreign merchant through the service. 

Asked whether business and merchant tools (invoicing, payment links, subscriptions, checkout gateways) were available, Shiuna clarified: "The current integration enables customers to link their personal PayPal accounts with their personal mFaisaa wallets, allowing them to receive PayPal funds into mFaisaa."

Other features would be "officially communicated" when available, she added.

But in his keynote speech at the launch, the president told guesthouse operators they could receive deposits directly from travellers, dive schools that they could secure overseas bookings with confidence, and artisans that they could sell Maldivian products beyond the country's borders. Ooredoo's marketing also pitched the service to small businesses with the promise of accepting payments from customers in more than 200 markets. 

Ooredoo's responses also cast doubt on the government's adoption figures. The president presented them as users but Saeed's remarks rendered the same 3,280 as "startups" and "businesses" signing up, a category the service does not support.

The gap between the 3,280 people who linked PayPal accounts and the 2,159 who have activated wallets also suggests that a third began the process and stopped. This might be innocuous (verification lag or a staged rollout) or it might mark the point where users met the service's limits and went no further. Ooredoo, which could settle the question, is not disclosing usage data.

Ooredoo's response, however, does settle a dispute that ran through comment threads since launch over what users actually pay, fed by headlines reporting that the telco takes no extra charge.

"Ooredoo does not apply any fees for PayPal-to-mFaisaa transfers. Customers are only subject to PayPal's standard receiving fee, which is currently US$ 1.50 plus 2 percent of the amount received," Shiuna said. 

On a US$ 100 payment, that is US$ 3.50. On smaller sums the fixed component bites harder: a US$ 10 payment loses US$ 1.70, an effective rate of 17 percent. Transaction limits are tiered by verification level with per-transaction caps between US$ 746 and US$ 1,492.

Ooredoo does not apply any additional charges on "transferring funds from PayPal to mFaisaa, withdrawing funds from mFaisaa to a local bank account, or cash withdrawals," she noted.

Shiuna referred to the "dedicated PayPal information page" for daily transaction limits, which "vary depending on the type and verification status of the customer's account." 

The economic ministry's statement announcing the launch used the phrase "seamless integration" five times. The ministry's subsequent flurry of social media posts repeated it throughout.

Not all customers would agree. A graphic designer, who first opened a PayPal account while living abroad, shared three weeks of screenshots and correspondence. His account page classes him as a "Send Only account holder" not permitted to receive funds.

PayPal's support chat told him that receiving payments requires linking through Ooredoo m-Faisaa; he replied that he had already done so, and was directed back to Ooredoo.

A subsequent review ended with PayPal permanently deactivating the account, citing unusual activity it said it could not support, and telling him any remaining funds could be held for up to 180 days. 

The notices do not say what triggered the review. Accounts opened in one country and operated from another are a known trigger for PayPal's compliance systems in any market.

"You can't send invoice and payment links," he said. "PayPal still gives Maldivians a send-only account." What the integration added was the route for money to move between a PayPal balance and mFaisaa, not the PayPal that businesses elsewhere use. In his view, that is of little benefit to the freelancers it was sold to.

"As a Maldivian youth in the tech community, the news of PayPal to Maldives was extremely exciting for me. I even launched my latest platform speak2fill.ai with PayPal gateway. Only to be disappointed from the half truths of our Politicians as no payments could be processed," Mohamed Jailam, chief executive of the software company Javaabu, wrote in a widely shared post days after the launch.

Jailam, who received a national award for software development in 2025, set out why: only personal accounts can receive, merchant tools are absent, and platforms differ on whether they recognise the linked accounts. He found Patreon does, while TikTok does not. In his estimate, that leaves 99 percent of business use cases impossible.

After the post, Ooredoo confirmed through the media that the company does not provide merchant services, that business PayPal wallets cannot be linked to mFaisaa, and that the service is built for individuals receiving international payments.

"This was definitely good progress," Jailam wrote once Ooredoo's clarification was out. But he cautioned that "to claim that the service is usable for businesses, while it's not, betrays trust". After President Muizzu discussed the service on state media, Jailam thanked him "for hearing our concerns" while adding that communication "free of half-truths" would be vital.

He also widened the discussion beyond PayPal. The Bank of Maldives' payment gateway accepts Alipay, WeChat Pay, UnionPay, Apple Pay and Google Pay, he noted, but only for resorts and travel agencies with the proceeds settled in dollars. He urged the president to make the dollar gateway available to the rest of Maldivian business.

According to reporting by Sun, talks are under way on offering full merchant services and opening the banks' dollar gateways to general business. No timeline has been attached to either.

Both President Muizzu and Minister Saeed attributed the integration to work undertaken by the current administration upon assuming office in November 2023. Both contrasted the achievement with failed efforts by previous administrations. On the Nation Chat programme, the president put the process at around a year of direct engagement. In his account, PayPal selected Ooredoo as its local partner with the government working alongside both.

In Ooredoo's account, bringing the service required "close collaboration over several years" between the company, PayPal, the government, the economic ministry and the Maldives Monetary Authority: "The project involved meeting international regulatory and compliance requirements, building secure technical integrations, and establishing the necessary frameworks to enable cross-border digital payments while ensuring a safe and seamless customer experience."

The National Payment System Act, the legal foundation that created the licensing regime, had been ratified under former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in May 2021. The MMA's interbank payment backbone, Favara, launched in August 2023. The final regulatory clearances, including the inward remittance licence issued to Ooredoo's fintech arm, and the political push to bring PayPal came under the Muizzu administration. 

In the days after launch, the fight over credit played out on social media. One side claimed sole credit to the government, the other sole credit to the private sector. 

By all accounts, what launched three weeks ago is a regulated, working channel for Maldivians to receive foreign earnings, built on firmer institutional ground than past attempts, as SparkHub CEO Jinan noted. But it is also a personal-account bridge into one wallet, carrying PayPal's fee, closed to merchants and unable to send money that did not first arrive. Until the next steps arrive, the accurate claim is more modest than the ceremony and victory lap suggested: not PayPal in the Maldives, but a door to PayPal, opened part way.