How to Get Paid Online When PayPal and Stripe Don't Work in Your Country

by PayFi · 5 October 2026 · Selling without permission

Stripe fully works in 44 countries. PayPal is limited or missing in many others. If you live outside those lists, the usual advice to "just set up Stripe" does not help you. A stablecoin payment link keeps no list of countries at all: if you have a phone and a USDT or USDC wallet on Solana, you can sell to anyone and be paid by anyone.

PayFi serves every country and every person on Earth. It does not ask where you live, and it keeps no list of allowed or blocked countries. Anyone with a USDT or USDC wallet on Solana can create a payment link or pay one, wherever they are. The laws of your own country still apply to you, as they do to any way of getting paid.

The designer the payment companies forgot

Let's meet a seller we will call Bilal. He is not a real person, but there are many people like him.

Bilal is a designer in Lahore. He makes icon sets for apps and websites, clean and careful work that clients in Europe and North America are happy to buy. A set costs 15 dollars. He also takes custom design jobs that pay a few hundred dollars each.

When he tries to sell his first icon set online, he does what every guide tells him. He opens the Stripe website to create an account. Pakistan is not on the list of countries Stripe supports. He tries PayPal. PayPal accounts cannot be opened in Pakistan either.

So Bilal does what many sellers in his position do. He asks a cousin in Dubai whether he can receive payments for him. He lists his icons on a large marketplace that takes a big share of every sale. He asks some clients to send bank transfers, which arrive days later, smaller than expected, after fees on both ends. Each workaround costs him money, time or independence. Some of them break the rules of the services involved.

Bilal's work is good enough for the global market. The global market's payment tools were simply not built with him in mind.

This essay is for sellers like Bilal, and for buyers who want to pay them. We will look at where the big payment companies work and where they do not, what that costs the people left out, and how a payment method without a country list changes the picture.

The old belief: online payments are global

If you live in the United States, the United Kingdom or Germany, it is easy to believe that online payments are global. You can buy from almost anywhere with your card. You can sell to almost anyone with a Stripe or PayPal account. The internet feels borderless.

But that experience depends on where you are standing. From the buyer's side, cards travel well. From the seller's side, the picture is very different. To receive card payments, a seller needs an account with a payment company, and payment companies only open accounts in countries where they have banking partners, licenses and systems in place.

The new belief this essay builds is more accurate: paying online is close to global; getting paid online is not. And the gap falls hardest on the countries where online work could matter most.

Where Stripe works

Stripe publishes the list of countries where businesses can use it. On its global availability page, 44 countries and regions are fully supported. A few more are marked as "Preview", including India and Indonesia, and a few, such as Nigeria and Kenya, are reached through an "extended network" of partner companies (Stripe).

The countries on the full list are mostly in Europe, North America, East Asia and Oceania, plus Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Many large countries do not appear on it at all. Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Egypt and Bangladesh are not listed (Stripe).

When we compiled Stripe's list against the countries of the world, the result was clear. Out of 176 countries we checked, 44 have full Stripe support, 7 have limited support through a preview or a partner network, and 125 have none.

Where PayPal works

PayPal is available in more countries than Stripe, but "available" can mean different things. In some countries, people can send money with PayPal but cannot receive it, which makes it useless for selling. PayPal's own developer documentation describes different feature sets: some countries can send, receive and withdraw; some can only receive and withdraw (PayPal Developer Docs).

That same documentation's list of countries that can receive payouts does not include Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ghana, Sri Lanka or Nepal, and lists India as able to receive and withdraw but not send (PayPal Developer Docs). In some other countries, PayPal does not operate at all.

In the list we compiled, 18 countries have neither Stripe nor PayPal: among them Pakistan, Nepal, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and Yemen. In those places, the two most common answers to "how do I get paid online?" both lead to a closed door.

The gaps, region by region

The map at the top of this essay makes the pattern visible, but it helps to walk through it region by region, using Stripe's own list (Stripe).

Africa. No African country is on Stripe's full list. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire are reached only through Stripe's extended network of partners. Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal and dozens of others are not listed at all. A continent of more than fifty countries is almost entirely outside the full list.

South Asia. India is in preview. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal are not listed. Together, this region is home to a very large number of freelancers, developers and designers who sell their work to clients abroad.

Southeast Asia. Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are on the full list. Indonesia is in preview. The Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are not listed.

Latin America. Brazil and Mexico are on the full list. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean are not listed.

The Middle East and Central Asia. The United Arab Emirates is on the full list. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, Turkey and the countries of Central Asia are not listed.

Europe, North America, East Asia and Oceania. This is where most of the full list sits: almost all of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, the United States, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Even here there are gaps. Iceland, Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova and several other European countries are not listed.

Read this way, the list is less a map of the world than a map of where card payment systems are most developed. That is understandable from a payment company's point of view. It is also exactly backwards from the point of view of a seller who most needs access to global buyers.

Who lives behind the closed doors

It would be easy to think of these as small or unusual places. Many of them are not.

Chainalysis, a company that studies blockchain data, ranks countries each year by how much ordinary people use crypto. In its 2025 ranking, the top ten were India, the United States, Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ukraine, the Philippines and Russia (Chainalysis). Look at that list again with Stripe in mind. Pakistan, Vietnam, Ukraine, the Philippines and Russia have no Stripe support. India, Nigeria and Indonesia have only limited support. Only the United States and Brazil are on the full list.

That is not a coincidence. People in countries that card-based payment companies do not serve well have been finding other ways to move money, and digital dollars are one of the most common. The demand for a way to get paid is there. The traditional tools are not.

There is a wider picture too. The World Bank's Global Findex survey estimates that about 1.3 billion adults still have no account at a bank or mobile money provider, while 86 percent of adults worldwide have a mobile phone (World Bank). Many people who could sell their skills online have a phone and an internet connection, but no bank account that the global payment system will connect to.

What the workarounds cost

Sellers outside the lists are not passive. They find ways around the closed doors. Each way has a price.

Using a friend or relative abroad. Someone in a supported country opens an account and forwards the money. This depends entirely on trust, adds delays, and usually breaks the payment company's rules, because the account is supposed to belong to the person actually doing the business. If the account is closed, the money inside can be held.

Selling through a large marketplace. Freelance and digital product marketplaces often pay sellers in more countries than Stripe or PayPal do. In return, they take a substantial share of each sale, control the relationship with the buyer and set the rules for what can be sold.

Bank transfers from abroad. International transfers are slow and expensive. The World Bank tracks this cost every quarter. In the first quarter of 2025, sending 200 dollars from one country to another cost 6.49 percent on average, and 14.55 percent through banks (World Bank). For a seller receiving small payments, that is a heavy tax, often paid by both the buyer and the seller.

Registering a company in another country. Some founders create a company abroad so that they can use Stripe there. This can cost hundreds of dollars to start, plus yearly fees, taxes and paperwork in a country where they do not live.

Not selling at all. This is the most common and least visible cost. Many people with skills worth paying for simply never start, because the first step, getting paid, looks impossible.

Notice what every workaround has in common. Each one puts someone else between the seller and the buyer: a relative, a marketplace, two banks, a foreign company. Each of those middle points can slow the money down, take a share of it or stop it altogether. The seller's income ends up depending less on the quality of their work and more on the goodwill and rules of people they never chose to work with. That dependence is the real cost, and it is the one a direct payment removes.

A payment method without a country list

Now let's look at what changes when the payment method itself has no country list.

A stablecoin payment link needs two things from the seller: a wallet address where USDT or USDC on Solana can be received, and a link to the product. It does not ask which country the seller lives in. It does not ask for a bank account, an ID or a company registration.

A wallet on Solana is just an app on a phone. Anyone can install one. It does not need permission from a bank, and it works the same way in Lahore as in London.

When a buyer anywhere in the world pays, the money goes to an address made just for that order. The payment is checked automatically, and in one transaction 99 percent goes to the seller's wallet and 1 percent goes to the service, usually within about 20 seconds. The product opens on the buyer's screen at the same moment.

For Bilal, this means a client in Germany can pay 15 dollars for an icon set and Bilal receives 14.85 dollars in his own wallet within seconds. No cousin in Dubai, no bank transfer that loses a fifth of its value, no marketplace taking a large share. The buyer pays in dollars, Bilal receives dollars, and nobody in between needs to approve either of them.

This is the meaning of the statement at the top of this essay. A payment link like this does not decide which countries deserve to take part. It does not check where you live because it does not need to. It moves a payment from one person to another and keeps a public record that it did so honestly.

How a buyer abroad actually pays you

It helps to see the payment from the buyer's side, because that is where many sellers worry: will a client in another country know what to do?

Say a small design agency in Berlin wants Bilal's icon set. Someone at the agency clicks his link. The page shows the product name and the price: 15 USDT or USDC. It explains that the payment must be sent on the Solana network.

If the agency already holds digital dollars, which many companies that work with freelancers abroad now do, the person opens their wallet or exchange, chooses USDC, chooses Solana, pastes the address shown for this order and sends 15. A few seconds later, the icons open on their screen. There is no account to create on Bilal's page and no form asking for their company details.

If the agency has never held digital dollars, the first payment takes longer. Someone has to open an exchange account or a wallet and buy some USDC, usually by card or bank transfer, with an ID check by the company that sells it. Card purchases cost something. MoonPay, for example, says its fee for card, Apple Pay and Google Pay purchases can be up to 4.5 percent, with a minimum fee of up to 3.99 dollars (MoonPay). After that first time, the agency can pay Bilal, or any other seller who accepts digital dollars, in about a minute.

For clients who work with freelancers regularly, that one-time setup often pays for itself quickly compared with international bank transfers. For a one-off buyer who will never use digital dollars again, it may not. That is a real limit, and it is why some sellers keep a marketplace or another channel open for buyers who will only pay by card.

Pricing for buyers everywhere

When your buyers can come from anywhere, how you set your price matters more.

Price in dollars. A dollar price is understood almost everywhere, and a dollar price paid in a dollar stablecoin means the buyer pays exactly what they see and you receive exactly what you expect, minus 1 percent. There is no currency conversion on either side, so there are no conversion fees and no surprises from exchange rates during the payment.

Use one price for everyone, or decide deliberately. Some sellers offer lower prices to buyers in countries where incomes are lower. Others keep one price. With a payment link, you can create separate links for separate prices if you want to. The point is that the choice is yours, not a payment company's.

Remember the minimum. Payment links usually have a minimum price, often around 10 dollars, because very small payments are not worth the work of processing. If you sell something cheaper, consider bundling it.

Keep your own costs in mind. If you change your earnings into local money, your exchange will charge something for that. Include it in your thinking when you set your price, just as you would include any other cost of doing business.

What still depends on where you live

Having no country list in the payment tool does not make every country the same. Some things still depend on where you live, and it is better to know them clearly.

The rules of your own country still apply. Some countries restrict or regulate crypto, and some have rules about receiving money from abroad, declaring income or paying taxes. A payment tool that does not check your country does not change those rules. Check what applies to you, and follow it.

Changing digital dollars into local money depends on local options. Receiving USDT or USDC is the same everywhere. Turning it into your local currency depends on which exchanges or services are available and legal in your country, what they charge and how fast they pay out. In some countries this is easy. In others it takes more work.

Your buyers need digital dollars too. A buyer who already holds USDT or USDC can pay you in seconds from anywhere. A buyer who does not must first get some, usually by buying it with a card or bank transfer from a service that checks their ID. In many countries this is easy. In some, it is harder.

Sanctions and global rules still exist. Stablecoin issuers can freeze addresses in some cases, usually at the request of authorities. Living in a particular country does not by itself mean your coins will be frozen, but it is part of the honest picture of what can and cannot touch your money.

None of these points closes the door the way a missing country on a payment company's list does. They are things to manage, not walls.

What buyers gain

Most discussions of country lists focus on sellers. Buyers lose something too.

When a talented seller in Pakistan, Vietnam or Ghana cannot accept payments, buyers everywhere lose access to their work, or pay more for it through middlemen. A buyer in Berlin who wants Bilal's icons may end up buying a lesser set from a seller who happens to live in a supported country. Or they pay a marketplace's mark-up. Or they deal with an awkward bank transfer that costs them fees too.

A payment link that works in every country gives buyers a direct way to pay the person whose work they want, wherever that person lives. The buyer sees the product and the price in dollars. They pay to an address made just for their order. The product opens on their screen. If they overpay, or pay after the order expired, they can get the extra back from their own order page.

Buyers also gain something less visible: a wider world of sellers. Every seller who can finally get paid is a new source of work, ideas and products.

Why a payment tool would choose to keep no list

Most payment companies keep country lists for understandable reasons. They work with banks and card networks that operate under national licenses. They hold money for sellers and must manage the risk of disputes. They are responsible for checking who their customers are, under the rules of each country they operate in. Every new country means new partners, new rules and new risks.

A stablecoin payment link starts from a different place. It does not connect to banks or card networks. It does not hold sellers' money, so it has no balance to protect against disputes. The payments are final and public, recorded on a network that runs the same way everywhere. Most of the reasons for a country list do not exist in this design.

There is also a belief underneath it. A person's ability to sell their work should not depend on whether a payment company has found a banking partner in their country. Two adults who want to trade, one making something and one wanting to buy it, should be able to do so directly, within the laws that apply to them. A payment tool's job is to make that trade work honestly, not to decide in advance which parts of the world are allowed to join.

That is what "every country and every person" means in practice. Not that every country's laws are the same, and not that every risk disappears. Just that the payment tool itself does not shut anyone out because of where they were born or where they live.

Questions buyers ask

Is it safe to pay a seller in a country I do not know? The payment itself is safe in the sense that it goes to an address made just for your order, and the product opens automatically when the payment is confirmed. What a payment tool cannot judge for you is the quality of the product. Look at the seller's work, read what you are buying and start with a small purchase if you are unsure.

Can my company get a receipt? Yes. A seller who sells services can use a receipt option that produces an image with the amount, the time in UTC, a note describing what was paid for and the record of the transaction. That record is also on the blockchain, where anyone can check it.

Does paying a seller abroad cost me extra? Not because of where the seller lives. You pay the price in dollars, plus the small network fee and any fee your exchange charges to send. There is no international fee and no currency conversion on the payment itself, because the price and the payment are both in dollars.

What if the seller's country has strict rules about crypto? That affects the seller, not your payment. Sellers are responsible for following the rules where they live, just as you are where you live.

Can I pay several sellers in different countries the same way? Yes. That is one of the main advantages. Once you hold some USDT or USDC, paying a designer in Pakistan, a developer in Vietnam and a writer in Argentina works the same way, at the same cost, with the same speed.

A practical start for sellers outside the lists

If you are in Bilal's position, here is a simple way to start.

1. Install a Solana wallet app on your phone, or open an account at an exchange that is legal in your country and supports USDT or USDC on Solana. If you use a wallet app, write your recovery words on paper and never share them.
2. Create a payment link for one product, using your wallet address and a link to the product, such as a file in cloud storage set so that anyone with the link can view it.
3. Test it by buying your own product once at the lowest price allowed, to see exactly what your buyers will see.
4. Tell your buyers how to pay in one or two sentences: "Pay with USDT or USDC on the Solana network. New to this? Here is a short guide."
5. Find out how you will change digital dollars into local money, if you need to: which exchanges are available and legal in your country, what they charge and how long they take.
6. Keep records of every sale for your own accounting and for any taxes you owe where you live.

You do not need a company abroad, a cousin in another country or a marketplace's permission. You need a product worth buying and a link to share.

Questions sellers ask

Do I need to tell the payment link which country I am in? No. It does not ask. It only needs your wallet address and your product link.

Can buyers from any country pay me? Yes, as long as they can get USDT or USDC on Solana. Most large exchanges and many wallet apps around the world support it.

Will my local bank accept money from an exchange? That depends on your country and your bank. Many exchanges pay out to local bank accounts or mobile money. Check the options available where you live before you need the money.

Is it legal to receive stablecoin payments in my country? That depends on your country's laws, which differ a lot and change over time. Look up the current rules, and if you are unsure, ask a local accountant or lawyer.

What if my country is sanctioned by other countries? Sanctions are complex and affect what people and companies elsewhere are allowed to do with you. A payment tool without a country list does not change those rules. If this applies to you, get local advice.

Back to Bilal

Let's go back to Bilal, with a finished icon set, clients abroad and no Stripe or PayPal.

He installs a wallet on his phone, writes his recovery words on paper and puts them away safely. He creates a payment link for his icon set and buys it himself once to make sure the files open. Then he sends the link to a client in Germany and another in Canada, with a short note on how to pay with USDT or USDC on Solana.

Both pay. Each payment arrives in his wallet within seconds: 14.85 dollars from each 15 dollar set. No cousin, no bank fees on both ends, no marketplace cut. A week later, he changes some of his digital dollars into rupees through a local exchange to pay his bills, and keeps the rest for next month.

That is the shift this essay is about. The old belief said that online payments are global. The more accurate belief is that paying is global but getting paid is not, at least not with the tools most guides recommend. A payment method without a country list closes that gap. It does not ask Bilal where he lives. It only asks whether someone wants what he made.

Sources

• Stripe, "Global availability": stripe.com/en-sg/global
• PayPal Developer Docs, "Countries and supported features": docs.paypal.ai
• Chainalysis, "2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index": chainalysis.com
• World Bank, "Digital technology is unlocking financial inclusion" (Global Findex 2025): blogs.worldbank.org
• World Bank, "Remittance Prices Worldwide, Q1 2025": remittanceprices.worldbank.org
• MoonPay, "Pricing disclosure": moonpay.com