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Turkish law forces PayPal to suspend operations in the country

It's the latest instance of Turkey taking a stance against foreign tech companies.

Associated Press

Turkey and the tech world's relationship is infamously contentious, and the country has crippled another company: PayPal. Starting this June 6th, the secure payment service is closing up shop, according to a statement (Turkish) spotted by TechCrunch. Paypal users in the country will be able to transfer any balances to a Turkish bank account after that, but that's about it. Sending and receiving money -- you know, PayPal's main attraction -- via the service will be off the table.

The suspension occurred thanks to an application for a license to process payments in the country being denied. Why? Because a recently passed law (PDF) in Turkey demands that a firm's IT systems be localized to the country itself if the company wants to do business there. PayPal tells TechCrunch that:

"We respect Turkey's desire to have information technology infrastructure deployed within its borders, however, PayPal utilizes a global payments platform that operates across more than 200 markets, rather than maintaining local payments platforms with dedicated technology infrastructure in any single country."

We've reached out to PayPal for more information and if this will affect the company's Venmo payment service as well, and will update this post should we get a response. This closure will apparently impact thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of customers. The "new money" the outfit bragged about in its Superbowl ad probably never saw this coming.