Online payments firm PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) is to cease operations in Turkey.
From 6 June, customers resident in Turkey will be unable to send or receive money via a PayPal account, although they will be able to log on to their account and transfer any funds to a Turkish bank.
The company, formerly part of online auction company eBay, said it was exiting the country after it was unable to secure a licence to trade, following new rules introduced by the country’s financial regulator that would have required the company to establish a local information technology (IT) centre in the country, which spans the border or Europe and the Middle East.
PayPal operates in 203 markets and handles 26 currencies. It prefers to have IT hubs handle responsibilities for several countries.
The information technology web site TechCrunch broke the news on Tuesday. It reported that the closure will affect tens of thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of consumers in the country.
Shares of PayPal eased 30 cents to US$37.79 yesterday.