I've been reading alot of questions and comments on this community page about Nigeria and all point towards Nigerian scam. As a Nigerian, I know this is the sad truth but permit me to say things are changing for the better. So far paypal has opened their system to Nigeria to send money only, perhaps they did not include receiving money due to security reasons. This may be justified due to past experiences but things are changing in Nigeria. Take for example the newly enforced Bank Verification Number system. As it stands today, to have access to the Nigerian financial system, your biometrics must be captured and your identity and life are tied to your bank verification number. Without a bank verification number, you cannot operate a bank account in Nigeria and all those who refused their biometrics to be captured had their accounts frozen by the government until full compliance is acheived. This bank verification number can be compared to the American social security number, perhaps even stronger than the SSN. The bank verification number has been adopted by serveral nigerian online merchants as an effective user verification tool to prevent fraud. As a banker myself, from industry statistics received last month, it revealed that financial fraud in Nigeria Q4 2015 reduced by 89% as compared to Q2 2015 and this was largely due to the introduction of the bank verification number. Scammers like to stay off the grid, this is why I strongly believe that if paypal can leverage on this system as a means of acount verification, only legitimate Nigerian users would apply for verification & anybody requesting shipping to Nigeria must do so from a paypal Nigeria account. Every other unverified account can be closed and the scam problem from Nigerian paypal accounts would be a thing of the past.
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